An image from the film Arnie The Doughnut. (Photo: Courtesy the Tribeca Film Festival)

Wednesday, April 27—Kids and their mothers filled the seats of the Scholastic auditorium today to watch seven short animated films by Weston Woods Studios. The mini-films were for children ages 3-7. You could tell how much the young audience liked the movies just by listening to them. If they were laughing, or staring intently, they liked the flick. If the tykes started talking, they probably were bored.

Weston Woods Studios has been animating children's books for 50 years. It's a branch of Scholastic that animates children's picture books and younger chapter books from Scholastic. It has produced such classics as The Mouse and the Motorcycle (by Beverly Cleary) and The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge (by Hildegarde H. Swift) This year, the animated shorts were screened as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

At the showing, there were seven movies: Arnie the Doughnut (directed by Daniel Ivanick), Diary of a Worm and I Lost My Bear (both directed by Gene Deitch), Duck for President and How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon (both by Maciek Albrecht), Chicka Chicka 1-2-3 (by Virginia Wilkos), and The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (by Michael Sporn).

The most interesting and visually beautiful movie was The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. It told the story of Philippe Petit, the man who walked a tightrope between the twin towers in New York City in August of 1974. The weakest was Chicka Chicka 1-2-3, during which the kids talked among themselves, and it ended to very scattered applause.

The movies were mostly educational, but with happy endings and disguised lessons. For instance, Arnie the Doughnut (the story of a doughnut who didn't want to get eaten) ended with Arnie becoming a pet dog, and Chicka Chicka 1-2-3 is a movie about counting.

Overall, there was a lot of beautiful animation and interesting stories. The directors translated pictures and words into moving art that complemented the books perfectly. Younger children should look out for upcoming Weston Woods films, both shorts and feature length.