A Wacky Computer-Animated ‘Nutcracker’

Video

The Nuttiest Nutcracker. Columbia TriStar Home Video. $15. For the family.

It’s silly and raucous--”No way, cheeseball,” says teenage Marie to the Rat King’s marriage proposal--and this computer-animated musical twist on “The Nutcracker Suite” tale doesn’t match Disney’s “Toy Story” wizardry, but the colorful 3-D visuals are still pretty remarkable.

There are flying motorcycles crafted from cheese, crackers and olives; walnuts and peanuts with mustaches and sneakers; a broccoli beauty; a kvetching Sugar Plum Fairy; and a mistletoe ending as the handsome Nutcracker and assorted veggie, fruit and nut pals go to Marie’s rescue and help her save Christmas.

Voices are provided by Jim Belushi, Cheech Marin and Phyllis Diller; the soundtrack includes songs written and performed by Peabo Bryson.

Audio

Swingin’ in the Rain. Maria Muldaur. Music for Little People. CD: $15. Cassette: $10. (800) 346-4445. For the family.

Another musical trip back to yesteryear from husky-voiced ‘60s pop star Maria Muldaur (“Midnight at the Oasis”), who revisits jaunty and jazzy novelty and movie songs from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, with a kids chorus, professional musicians, including David Grisman on banjo and mandolin, and Captain Dan Hicks, who joins Muldaur in “Aba Daba Honeymoon.”

A few other cuts: “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” “Mairzy Doats,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “A-You’re Adorable” and Hicks’ swinging “Heck I’d Go!” (on a UFO trip).

The Cookie Girl. David Novak. August House Audio. 56 minutes. Cassette: $12. (800) 284-8784. Ages 4 to 10.

Lively storyteller David Novak spins comical tales recorded before an appreciative audience of kids. A daughter outsmarts her busy mother and comes up with a telling observation of life in “A World Puzzle”; a magic rooster gets the better of a greedy sultan in “Give Me Back My Button”; and there are surprise endings in “The Fiddler Crab,” filled with vivid sound effects, and the creation tale, “Oh! That’s a Good Idea!”

With his comfortable, casual delivery and musical punctuation, Novak takes familiar tales and gives them a twist too. In the title track, a little girl’s passion for cookies turns her into a runaway, roll-away cookie, and in a “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” follow-up, vain Rudolph learns a lesson in humility when he misses one of Santa’s Christmas Eve flights. Novak embellishes “Peter Piper” with Peter’s papa and plundering pirates, and ends with “The Grasshopper and the Ants,” telling it three times until the ending is just right.

A Child’s Garden of Songs. Music for Little People. CD: $15. Cassette: $9. (800) 346-4445.

Rain and wind, a treetop view, playing at pirates, finding magic in the ordinary, seeking far horizons: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verse” agelessly captures the dreamy, playful and wondering world of childhood. Musician-producer Ted Jacobs sensitively matches the poetry with soft Celtic rhythms, sung feelingly by adult and child vocalists.

Stevenson’s words and some standout tunes make the album, beginning with the first two selections: “Bed in Summer,” a child’s wistful wish to stay up “when all the sky is clear and blue,” and the instrumentals and a woman’s soulful vocal that bring to life “The Wind” so that you can indeed hear the willful air currents pass “like ladies’ skirts across the grass.”

Some songs tend toward a soft pop sameness, but the poetry sings with a melody all its own.