Book/Movie Review: Juno Baby

I'm exhausted!  This week I am volunteering to lead recreation time at my church's VBS (vacation Bible school, for those of you unfamiliar with the lingo).  VBS is like a week of free daycare. Kids come to the church to sing, do crafts, play games, sing songs, etc.  Think summer camp, but mostly indoors and only three hours per day.  The week usually has a theme and ours is "Saddle Ridge Ranch".  If you couldn't tell from the title, it is a western themed program.  Anyway, I am outside in this tortuous heat from 8:30AM - 11:30AM every day this week.  The good thing is, I have an extensive list of games that involve water balloons and squirt bottles.  Lookout kids, I have deadly aim!  It takes a lot of trust for someone to drop their kid of at VBS and let me chuck water balloons at them for twenty minutes straight.  Which brings me to my main point.  Parents - SPEND TIME WITH YOUR KIDS!  Or someone else will.







Now, let's get into my movie review for this month.  I would like to draw everyone's attention to The Juno Company and their Juno Baby videos in particular.  The Juno Company was founded by Dr. Belinda Takahashi and Adam Adelman.  Dr. Takahashi is an Emmy award-winning composer and the brains behind the original music of Juno Baby.  Adam is the creative genius with the voices for the cast of characters.  Speaking of characters, the cast of the Juno Baby videos features Juno, baby Rai Rai, Bunny, Buzz the bee, Indie the scaredy cat, and Murphy the caterpillar.  The Juno Baby videos use these fun characters to tell engaging stories that teach classic lessons for children.  The thing that makes Juno Baby different from every other children's video is that a lot of the music is original and all of the songs are performed by a live orchestra, not a synth machine making goo-goo gah-gah baby sounds.  I pulled the following quote from their website:

"All of our products are based on our lifelong love of music and our belief in its power to open hearts and minds. We firmly believe that by surrounding young children with beautiful music, we can engage their minds, inspire them artistically and nurture them emotionally." - TheJunoCompany.com

The Juno videos have been a great addition to our child's media experience.  She loves the songs and even at 15 months is able to sing some of the words and try to mimic the melodies.  The characters are fun enough that parents won't find them boring, which makes it a great way to share music with your child.  You will be washing dishes one day and find yourself humming the tunes to the Juno Baby classics.  If you are a music lover, you will definitely appreciate the Juno Baby series.