Gather ‘round for fun

Dan Zanes and Friends:

Catch That Train!

Festival Five Records/

Starbucks Hear Music

CD: $15

www.danzanes.com

The world would be an infinitely happier place if Dan Zanes were its orchestrator. Zanes, the Del Fuegos’ stone rocker who stunningly reinvented himself a few years ago as a family music artist, has soared into the field, offering a gift of music in the homemade, everyone-gather-’round, Woody Guthrie tradition. Here, Zanes is joined in his cozy, idiosyncratic interpretations of spirituals, folk songs, original tunes and casual, comic chit-chat by Natalie Merchant, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Kronos Quartet, the Children of Agape of South Africa and other top-notch music-makers. (Zanes’ music videos were recently added to the Disney Channel’s “Playhouse Disney” programming.)

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Beethoven’s Wig 3

Rounder Kids

CD: $9.99

www.rounder.com

When Richard Perlmutter began writing lyrics for famous pieces of classical music, the result was a remarkably witty, informative mix of entertainment and music education, executed in Perlmutter’s light baritone and by polished classical musicians and singers. This third release in the twice-Grammy-nominated series puts the focus on specific instruments: the coronet, French horn, bass, mandolin, oboe and more, with Perlmutter’s wacky lyrics sung to the symphonic sounds of works by Bizet, Saint-Saens, Bach, Beethoven and more.

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Life in the Undergrowth

BBC Video

2-DVD set: $34.98; for the family

(800) 216-1BBC

www.bbcamericashop.com

They outnumber us some 200 million to 1, and they, not we, are essential to the survival of the Earth’s ecosystems, yet spiders and worms, butterflies, moths, beetles, wasps, millipedes, ants and other members of the invertebrate family mostly go about unobserved by their human neighbors. That changes with this extraordinary view of the tiniest lives among us, thanks to technological advances that allow the filmmakers and host David Attenborough to offer viewers a startlingly up-close perspective of insects’ family life, courtship rituals, war, even farming and plant husbandry.

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Doogal

Genius Products Inc.

DVD: $19.99; ages 5 and up

www.amazon.com

The visual, toyland aspect of this CGI film about a shaggy dog named Doogal on a quest to save the world from freezing over is charming. Not so the awkwardly used celebrity voice cast (Jon Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg, William H. Macy, Chevy Chase, Jimmy Fallon, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench) and wince-making, contemporary-glib dialogue. The plot: Doogal and friends (a cow, a rabbit,

a snail and a train) must find lost magic diamonds in order to stop an evil magician (Stewart) from freezing the world. Along the way, they discover the forced moral of the tale:

friendship is their strongest weapon. Dench as narrator sets the right tone, albeit only briefly. The rest of the repartee is simply tone-deaf. Some

skeleton baddies and the (temporary) death of a toy soldier are too intense for the youngest viewers.

*

StoryWatchers Club,

Adventures in Storytelling:

Keys to Imagination

DVD: $19.95

Ages 5 to 12

(877) 786-7998

www.StoryWatchersClub.com

The idea is great, the execution less so. This new series celebrates the imagination-sparking magic of storytelling with performances by professional storytellers who use their voices, facial expressions, body movement and sometimes unusual props -- origami, string -- to tell stories from around the world. Unfortunately, cameras cut away from the storytellers to show kids watching the performers, interrupting the flow for viewers, and “clubhouse” segments that bracket the performances lose points for featuring notably unappealing kid puppets.

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-- Lynne Heffley