Tag: The Chipettes

Kids Today: So You Want to Be President…and More Stories to Celebrate American History

I originally kicked off this column with a review of “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Chipettes” back in January 2009, intending to regularly sit down with my daughter, watch whatever DVDs of child-friendly programming came into the Bullz-Eye offices, and get her take on them. Seemed like a great plan at the time, but if you click on the category for “Kids Today” at the bottom of this posting, however, you’ll find that I, uh, haven’t actually written another column since I kicked it off. The problem, you see, is that Ally, God bless her, is a lot like me…which is to say that, when it comes to TV, she has a short attention span which is only lengthened when we’re watching one of what she refers to as her shows. Although this list of shows varies, some of the stalwarts over the course of her 4-year life span have included “The Simpsons,” “Sesame Street,” “Curious George,” “Arthur,” and the God-awful “Caillou,” along with relatively recent additions like “Sid the Science Kid” and “Dinosaur Train.” For better or worse, however, we don’t tend to get those titles, and the kid stuff that we do get…? 9 out of 10 times, she simply can’t be bothered.

But Ally’s a smart kid, and an observant one as well, so you never know what’s going catch her interest. Take, for instance, her fascination with the President of the United States. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that she was intrigued by last year’s Presidential election, given that she had to endure people talking about Barack Obama and John McCain for quite a few months there, but she’s continued to ask us about this President and that, even picking up a few names and facts about previous Commanders in Chief along the way. With this being the case, I thought that, for once, I might actually be able to hold her interest with a DVD that was being offered up for review: So You Want to Be President…and More Stories to Celebrate American History, the latest release from Scholastic.

When the DVD arrived, I showed it Ally and explained that it contained animated readings of four stories: “So You Want To Be President,” by Judith St. George, “My Senator and Me: A Dog’s-Eye View of Washington, DC,” by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, “Madam President,” by Lane Smith, and “I Could Do That! – Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote,” by Linda Arms White. She seemed cautiously optimistic but warned me ahead of time, “All right, but I only like George Obama.” Yeah, I know, that’s the sort of silly-kid punchline that even “Family Circus” would throw into the reject pile, but she was really tired. As a proud father, I must assure you that she knows that Washington was the first President of the United States, can identify Obama as the current President and George W. Bush as his predecessor, and – courtesy of her mother – can identify a piece of trivia about Abraham Lincoln, which you’ll read about in a moment.

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Kids Today: “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Chipettes”

And to think I originally only requested this DVD in order to make my daughter happy. Little did I know that it would result in a trip to Wikipedia that would completely blow my mind…but before we dive into that ridiculousness, how about a little background material first?

In case you’re not familiar with the trio known as the Chipettes, they are, as you might well have deduced, the female equivalent of the Chipmunks. Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor – for those are the girls’ names – came into existence for two very simple reasons: the Chipmunks’ creators, Ross Bagdasarian and Janice Karman, wanted a chance to do some girl-sung tunes, and because it came them the chance to deal with issues that girls were going through that boys wouldn’t necessarily be dealing with. (Don’t be disgusting: Bagdasarian clarified, “We had a baby girl at the time. We wanted to let her know she can be president, or a soccer champion, or whatever.”)

As Ally (my daughter) watched these six Chipette-centric episodes of “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” she seemed very annoyed by the fact that the opening credits in no way spotlighted the girls. “I thought you said this was the Chipettes,” she grumbled. I assured her that, although these were technically the adventures of the Chipmunks, the Chipettes would feature heavily in all of them; she seemed placated once they finally turned up, thankfully, and sat happily through the entire DVD.

Oh, if you’re wondering, the episodes that have been included are “May the Best Chipmunk Win” (Alvin and Brittany compete for the position of School President), “Operation Theodore” (the Chipettes work as candy-stripers and lose a patient), “Sisters” (Brittany wants to join a sorority but ends up changing her mind after a poignant performance of “Material Girl”), “The Greatest Show-Off on Earth” (the Chipettes join forces with the Chipmunks to save a circus), “My Fair Chipette” (Jeanette competes against Brittany in a beauty pageant), and “Tell It to the Judge” (Brittany and Alvin battle each other in a “People’s Court” parody). In short, if your kid likes the Chipmunks cartoons, then they’ll like this DVD…and if you’ve got a daughter, then she might be even more entertained than usual.

Now, about this Wikipedia entry…

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