The children\'s story “In the Small, Small Pond” may seem a million miles from David Lynch\'s Blue Velvet, but they share one thing: Laura Dern. Dern narrates the animated short with evident delight. Maybe it would have been a bedtime story for the children she might have had with Kyle MacLachlan if Lynch had chosen to make a Blue Velvet sequel.
In any case, the presence of Hollywood stars on the Scholastic Storybook Treasures DVD series has almost become commonplace—a fun and meaningful (and undemanding) job for actors in between projects. Dern\'s tangent into storytelling is on the latest in the DVD series, “Caldecott Favorites,” which also features the voices of John Lithgow, Lynn Whitfield and others reading from award winning stories. The visuals are by various artists, but most of the short films resemble children\'s book illustrations with the foregrounded characters in animated motion. The three-disc set is a “read-along” collection with the words appearing as subtitles along with the narration.
“Caldecott Favorites” is recommended for kids ages two-nine.
