Cara's Kindness

PreS-Gr 1—Cara, author Kristi Yamaguchi's young figure skating creation, is one caring cat. She reaches out to a frightened Darby the Dog and helps him learn to skate. When Darby thanks her, she replies, "No worries" and "Just pass on the kindness!" (the film's refrain). As a result, Darby shares his lunch with Pax the Polar Bear, and Pax retrieves Marky the Monkey's ball, and so on as animal friends with alliterative names benefit from the giving spirit. Cara realizes at the end that with "one good deed at a time," the kindness returns full circle back to her. The colorful illustrations by John Lee are brightly cheerful, but they receive only minimal animation, with swaying movement and repetitive waving. Narrator Susie Berneis voices each character differently, from Samantha the Skunk to Milo the Mole. The DVD might make a useful introduction to the idea of random acts of kindness. As Cara observes, "Caring makes a big difference."