Beauty and the Beast: Memorex Children's Series

Improve your child's reading and vocabulary skills with Memorex Classic Tales, designed by child development experts. Journey back to a story retold in the classic tradition of Charles Perrault and the Brother's Grimm. Carry on the tradition of the highly valued, original tales passed from generation to generation. The story is told in considerably greater depth than the Disney version of a few years back, primarily because there's so much text and (therefore) so many more details. It is this preponderance of text – whether you're reading while listening to narration in "storybook mode", or just listening to narration in "movie" mode – that is the disc's greatest strength and fatal weakness. The simple, mostly black-and-white drawings and the pathetic excuses for animation (a flag that moves back and forth between two positions, to simulate waving in a breeze, is by no means a "movie") are disposable fluff. This storybook is really about using the computer, very straightforwardly, to read the story aloud while letting kids follow along. There's also some hypertext, offering words that will be briefly defined when clicked on.