Brainy Baby: Shapes & Colors

I sometimes wonder whether the popularity of educational videos for infants are truly signs of parental concerns about developing intelligence or merely guilt-free electronic babysitters. Seeing the trance-like state my toddler enters, I suspect the latter. In any case, Shapes & Colors opens with babies and young children cavorting with cardboard cutout shapes, followed by toys, food, and basic computer animation all being employed to create examples of squares, rectangles, circles, ovals, and triangles, as well as familiar shapes such as hearts, stars, diamonds, and crescents. In the color identification section, young tots are shown primary and secondary colors, as well as pink, brown, black, white, silver and gold. While the tape lacks the polished production values of its counterpart in the Baby Einstein series (Baby Newton, reviewed in VL-7/02), it is less painfully homemade than either Go Go Globee (VL-11/01) or Learning and Fun in the Tub (VL-9/02). Other titles in the Brainy Baby series include: ABC's, 123's, Animals, French, Spanish, Right Brain and Left Brain. Recommended for public libraries where baby AV circulates well. Aud: P. (R. Reagan)