I don't often write about videos here. Mostly because the focus has always been music and also because we don't watch a lot of videos. Although we recently instituted Saturday Movie Night at our house complete with big-screen feature attraction and popcorn. So far the big hits have been the old Pink Panther movies. It's crazy how well the physical comedy of Peter Sellers translates to a 5 year old. And the sexy stuff goes right over her head.

But recently we have another hit — a little Scholastic video that isn't a movie at all. We have this favorite book in our house, it's called Arnie the Doughnut, by Laurie Keller. If you haven't read it you're missing out. She also wrote Scrambled States of America and the Open Wide book that is probably very dog-eared at your dentists' office. Her books are brilliant -- she illustrates them and fills the pictures with tons of hilariously wry little asides. They make Tuesday laugh out loud and frankly us too.

One of the hard working PR people that sends me tons of emails that I usually ignore sent me one telling me that they had turned Arnie, the story of a doughnut who doesn't want to be eaten, into one of those Scholastic Video Series DVDs. In case you're not familiar with them, they are fairly low-fi vids that take popular books and sort of animate them... sort of. I mean, this is not the kind of animation the kids today are used to, it's more in line with what we watched as kids. They move the eyes a bit, maybe make the mouth move along to the spoken words. And that's why I LOVE them. I mean, they are quaint. And this story is fantastic. Lenny or Squiggy narrates, I get them mixed up. Coupled with five other books that are sort of animated, it makes for about a 40 minute video (Tuesday's other favorite? "The New Animal.") Perfect for a Saturday Movie Night, low-fi style.

Pick it up here.