Welcome to Cinema with Sarah!

Greetings, and welcome to "Cinema with Sarah," a blog for cinema-centric kids, by a cinema-centric kid! As a mom, I've always had mixed feelings about my daughter watching movies and videos. On the one hand, depending upon who you ask, all media is evil incarnate, and should be avoided at all costs. And for us, it was, until Sarah was about two-and-a-half. But then, we stumbled upon "Blues Clues," and away we went--full-on into the land of children's media. Admittedly, some of it is pretty bad. However, some of it, like "Blues" and "Kipper" and other family favorites, is pretty darn good.

As Sarah has gotten older, her taste in movies and videos has shifted (of course). In fact, she just saw her very first movie in a REAL theater--Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." And wow--what an impression that made on her. For weeks afterwords, she kept asking me questions, such as, "What was your favorite part of that movie," or, "What was the scarriest part of that movie," or, "What was the happiest part of that movie?" Surely, there's a literacy project in here somewhere.

As a kid who grew up around media (my dad worked for a local television station), I have an insider's understanding of how it's all produced. Nothing is random in video production--it's all created to elicit a response from the viewer--to laugh, to cry, to be afraid, or to (in most cases) buy something. How nice it would be if we were ALL insiders in the world of video production, learning from a young age that viewing any kind of media with a critical eye is necessary to make well-informed choices. Plus, it's not enough (in my view) to just say, "Oh, I really liked it!" Tell me WHY! What, precisely, did you like? Old English teachers never die, you know--they just keep asking for more details!

So, Sarah and I have created this blog as an outlet to combine her emerging critical movie-viewing skills with her newly emerging literacy skills. Hopefully, this information will be useful to kids and parents alike! Stay tuned for periodic updates...