Here Come the ABCs, produced by Disney Sound with substantial contribution by the band They Might Be Giants (remember Istanbul Not Constantinople?) is one of the biggest disappointments in a children's DVD I've experienced in a long time. That's saying a lot for me, because we don't have broadcast or cable television in my house. My children only watch DVDs that I have bought for them to watch, plus a few old VHS tapes.

The core problem with Here Come the ABCs is that it isn't matched well to either of its primary audiences: Children just starting to learn to read, and their parents.

For children just starting to read, Here Come the ABCs comes too fast, and hard to understand, with too little appropriate content. The fast-paced, full of information approach perfected long ago by They Might Be Giants is more than young children can handle. Kids at the early reading stage need material that is natural, yet slow and clear.

What the children can get out of the material on the DVD isn't much: Identifying letters, mostly. There is very little attempt to match the identification of the letters of the alphabet with the sounds that the letters make. It's essential to have this information alongside the letter itself, just as it's essential for children to see graphic representations of numbers along with numbers as they learn them. Without this second level of information, learning of letters is by rote and lacking in significance for children. Kids want to know what the letters are for, and how to use them, but the songs on Here Come the ABCs fail to deliver.

Often, the video on the DVD fails to provide any good visual reinforcement for helping children learn the alphabet and its sounds. For example, in the video for the song URNX (You are an ex - get it?), there are not any letters on the screen for most of the video, in spite of the fact that all of the words in the song are letters of the alphabet, like ICU (I see you - get it?). So, children could easily watch the song without understanding that letters are being sung about at all.

For adults, the subject matter of Here Come the ABCs just isn't that interesting. They Might Be Giants have earned a reputation of taking obscure information and expressing it in the form of appealingly geeky pop music. Are parents truly interested in the letters of the alphabet, though? I know I'm not. The trying-to-be-clever material in the songs on Here Come the ABCs may be over the heads of my children, but it really isn't clever enough to keep my attention.

I appreciate a good educational DVD because I love watching my kids have fun, but even more because I love watching my kids learn to do new things. Watching them learn makes me feel proud of them. Watching a DVD full of songs about the alphabet for its own sake, without good learning on the part of my children, is not appealing to me.

All in all, Here Come the ABCs has a slapped-together look. Animation for one song is often reused in another song, suggesting that the production crew either had limited resources, or didn't care enough to provide original material for each song.

Then there are the felt puppets. In order to fill up space on the DVD, some poorly constructed, poorly performed puppets perform to mediocre songs that are meant to sound like music that They Might Be Giants might perform. These portions are not at all entertaining for me, though they might keep the attention of a child desperate to watch something on a television screen.

Here Come the ABCs is not completely without values. It does give children the chance to see letters, and They Might Be Giants does have music that is more interesting for an adult than the kind of music that is often on a DVD for children.

Still, the good points are not enough to make this a DVD that will be watched very often in our household. There is nothing so great on Here Come the ABCs that I feel the need to watch it again.

In the most important test for a DVD made for children, Here Come the ABCs has failed: After seeing it once, neither of my children have asked to see it again.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8