Insights to Children’s Dreams and Reality

Video

About Us: The Dignity of Children. brainPlay.com/Steeplechase Entertainment, 94 minutes, $19.95. Families.

This TV-to-video release is the aptly named 1997 Oprah Winfrey special that so intimately captures real children in moments of intentional and unintentional revelations about what they dream, fear, how they view the adults in their lives, how they hurt and hope.

Winfrey also effectively recalls her own childhood tragedies, and writers Brent Staples (“Parallel Time: Growing Up Black and White”), Nicholasa Mohr (“Growing Up in the Sanctuary of My Imagination”) and Laura Cunningham (“Sleeping Arrangements”) share the ups and downs of their formative years.

Only theatrical music and camera work occasionally sound a false note; the children and words are real and any adult who may have forgotten what it feels like to be a child will find that reality here.

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends: Cranky Bugs & Other Stories. The Britt Allcroft Co./Anchor Bay Entertainment. 37 minutes. $12.98. (800) 745-1145.

Following Ringo Starr and George Carlin, Alec Baldwin is Thomas’ new storyteller, and he’s an inspired choice. His lively delivery and creatively expressive character voices are pleasurable, and so are these six new stories set on the magical Island of Sodor, where trains and people live and work together.

In “Cranky Bugs,” a rude crane learns how useful and brave little engines Thomas and Percy are; in “Lady Hatt’s Birthday Party,” station owner Sir Topham Hatt tries unsuccessfully to get to his wife’s special birthday bash without mussing his new suit. In other tales, an old coach gets a new lease on life, and haughty Gordon, the big diesel, learns that he should be careful what he wishes for. The video ends with a delightful music video, “Night Train,” following the little trains through the countryside, along the coast and in the city as they travel the tracks until dawn.

Audio

Car Tunes: Songs for a Family Adventure. Mark Beckwith. Building Block Entertainment. CD: $14.95; cassette: $9.95 (plus $3 S/H). https://www.buildingblockworld.com/ (818) 787-8500.

Popular local artist Mark Beckwith is in top form in this collection of mostly original songs about the ABC’s, slip-sliding in the mud, a “Can You Find It” car game that alternates between raucous kids’ rap and Beckwith’s mellow harmonies; counting toucans; and comic repartee with Beckwith’s talking pig, Puey. Beckwith’s “dream” about Beethoven is engagingly set to “Fur Elise,” and he creates a pleasing, softer mood in “How I Wonder,” a variation on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Making Our Garden Grow” and a nostalgic “Horse on the Merry-Go-Round.”