SHOWS FOR YOUNGSTERS AND THEIR PARENTS TOO : Here’s one cool cat that CBS Video brings home for a sing-along

Theodor Seuss Geisel, who will always be known simply as Dr. Seuss, revolutionized early reading when he wrote alternatives to the Dick-and-Jane primers. Children’s access to his 1957 “The Cat in the Hat” increased by leaps in the ‘70s, when television--with the good doctor’s help--adapted the humorous tales of the striped-hatted cat.

Now, on Wednesday, CBS Video repackages Seuss with lyrical songs, releasing Dr. Seuss Sing-Along Classics. The four-video set includes The Hoober-Bloob Highway, The Lorax and Green Eggs and Ham and Other Stories.

“Dr. Seuss’ stories are just incredible, since he was such a wordsmith and a punster,” says Mindy Pickard of CBS-Fox Video marketing. “He loved language, and that’s what lasts throughout all these years. Hopefully that love of language will rub off on youngsters.”

Offering five to eight songs per half hour, the videos are “upbeat, very funny and offer a very different kind of music,” Pickard says. “You get to see the lyrics at the bottom of the screen and it can help learn to read, if the kids are in that stage. Adults enjoy the playfulness of the language.”

The “bouncing ball” that accompanies the lyrics in each video becomes a green egg or a hat or a tree in the sing-alongs.

Seuss’ stories, Pickard says, convey “lessons for every age, and they work despite the changes in society--they’re the basic things in life, the basic morals.

“Dr. Seuss was way ahead of his time. They really stand up to time and are hip.”

The “Dr. Seuss Sing-Along Classics” (CBS Video, $10) is available in stores Wednesday. For ages 2 to 8.

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