Videos Offer Armchair Travel and Important Lessons in Art

Video

How to Visit an Art Museum. Tellens Inc. 30 minutes. $19.95. (800) 383-8811, (520) 742-0649. The narrator’s non-dynamic style could make your eyes glaze, except that this informative and accessible introduction for a family art tour is so thoughtful and well-constructed. Making its way through the respected Art Institute of Chicago, the video offers different ways of seeing a work, in detail and in full, and points out how museum-goers take themselves into the artist’s world. It suggests looking for themes, noticing how the everyday--for instance family, food, nature--is portrayed or how cultures and history affect artists’ visions.

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Trav’s Travels: United States of America. IVN Entertainment Inc. 25 minutes. $19.95. Ages 7 to 12. (800) 767-4486, Ext. 229. This zippy trip across the states, part of a new educational series, “Geography for Kids,” flits from New England’s brilliant fall colors--locals call the tourists “leaf peepers”--to San Francisco’s cable cars. A pop-out map gives viewers a sense of states’ locations; enthusiastic narration is delivered by Trav, the show’s likable teenage host. There’s no time for anything but the briefest of glimpses at Iowa cornfields, Appalachian music makers, the Rockies, the vast Mississippi, the Grand Canyon, urban megalopolises, people at work and play--but the tiny tastes whet the appetite for more.

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New York Scene for Kids. V.I.E.W. Video. $19.98. 54 minutes. (800) 843-9843. For the family. Although it doesn’t dig deep and spotlights only one family-friendly hotel, there are some helpful tourist highlights and safety and security tips for first-time family visits to New York City. In addition to the more obvious spots--the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, the Central Park Zoo, F.A.O. Schwartz and a Broadway musical--places to go include South Street Seaport with its nautical exhibits and museums, the Sea-Air-Space Museum, Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Sony Wonder’s interactive Technology Lab and the ghoulishly fun Jekyll and Hyde restaurant. Advice about the subway system, baby-sitting service and child safety are included.

Audio

Billboard Presents: Family Travel Classics. Kid Rhino. CD: $9.98; cassette: $5.98. All ages. Enjoyment of this offbeat collection depends on your interest in--and tolerance level for--TV and movie music sung by Sally Field in her “Flying Nun” persona (“I’m on My Way,” repeated endlessly), Yogi Bear (“Whistle Your Way Back Home”), the Brady Bunch kids (“Keep On”) or Goofy (“In the Open Road”). Still, there are neat highlights: the late, great Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra doing the “Route 66 Theme,” the main theme from the original “Star Trek,” Judy Garland in “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” and “Ease on Down the Road” from the Broadway production of “The Wiz.”