StoryWatchers Club: Adventures in Storytelling—Keys to Imagination

In this live-action production filmed before a young audience, several storytellers present original tales, including Kevin Cordi (“When Did Polar Bears Learn to Dance?”), Christine Kallevig (“Fold Along” stories with origami paper folding), Charlotte Batin (as a fairy godmother in “Cinderella Revisited”), Barbara Schutzgruber (“The Mysterious Visitor”), and Bob and Kathy Myers (“Peanut Butter” and “Wide-Mouthed Frog”). In between the stories, puppets talk about the importance of imagination. Overall, the quality of the tellers and tales is frankly uneven (it would have been better to put the excellent Myers duo first instead of last), and while the sets and costumes are lavish, the puppeteers here need to learn one of the main rules of puppetry: drop the thumb to make the characters “speak” while keeping the fingers still (otherwise, the puppets' heads distractingly flop backward with each syllable, as they do here). DVD extras include student storytellers and a “making-of” featurette. Optional. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Reagan)