Description:
If order is important to your child, Thomas the Tank Engine's world is probably a favorite place. In Thomas and Friends: The Great Festival Adventure, kids enter the tidy world of Thomas and Friends and immediately set about polishing engines, loading boxcars with the right items, and making sure passengers get onto the train in timely, proper fashion. All the while, Sir Topham Hatt encourages kids with phrases such as "I know I can trust you to be really useful." High praise in this place where practicality is paramount. This CD-ROM could win an award for cinematography--the "camera" tracks, zooms, and swoops through the activities. Thomas, Percy, and everyone's favorites, the Troublesome Trucks, move about the Island of Sodor preparing for the upcoming festival. The seven activities are either of the counting/sorting/pattern-recognition variety or ones that work on basic hand-eye coordination and mouse control. Kids can go to the engine shed to polish, oil, and wrench the engines into prime working condition; unload Bulstrode the Barge and fit the packages into the boxcar with the matching label; or help round up cows that escaped from a farmer's pen. Each task has only three levels of difficulty, and they can be completed quickly by a kid with some computer savvy or an older child. Between these chores are short vignettes involving Thomas and his friends, making this CD-ROM feel familiar to fans of the television show. While the age range for this program is "2 and up," don't assume that it'll keep your 5-year-old busy for very long. But if you have a helpful 3-year-old who needs to learn how to mouse and count, Thomas and Friends can put your child on the right track. --Anne Erickson
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