Move over Hermie, “The Adventures of Carlos Caterpillar” recruits bugs to teach 4- to 10-year-olds, with programs 4 and 5 released last month from Vision Video. The Litterbug DVD addresses care of the environment, while Buggy Bigbucks looks at contentment and true friendship. Each 25-minute episode has English and Spanish subtitles, and retails for $9.99.    

Moving underwater, the “Starfish Cove” series has just brought two episodes to Christian retail. Distributed by Bridgestone Multimedia Group, Never Trust a Krum! alerts youngsters to the dangers of child predators, while Da’Codfather recasts the story of the good Samaritan. Total running time for the set, with extras, is 49 minutes. Retail price, $14.95.

A developmental DVD series that aims to give young viewers global awareness as well as biblical foundations begins distribution to Christian retail this month by PorchLight Home Entertainment’s new Inspire division.

The “Little Leaders” collection from the same-named company offers four, 30-minute programs about well-known Bible characters that blend live action, computer animation and puppetry in Sesame Street-style presentations for 2- to 4-year-olds.

The programs feature interactive learning tracks in American Sign Language as well as other language tracks in addition to English. The different episodes variously offer Spanish, Chinese, Danish, Germany, Italian and Portuguese.

While watching the DVDs may not teach children to learn a second language, “it will certainly expose their ears and minds to the sound of different languages” at a key developmental time, the creators said.
Describing itself as “a ‘little’ company with a great vision,” Little Leaders has won recognition for its work, including the Film Advisory Board Award of Excellence and the Seal of Excellence Award from Creative Child magazine.

Little Noah (8-10863-01070-8) explores the diversity of God’s creation, Little Ruth (-1-5) tells the story of Ruth and Boaz, Little Joseph (-2-2) looks at how God guided Joseph, and Little Moses (-3-9) follows the life of Israel’s great leader.

The Little Leaders programs retail for $9.98 each, or $34.98 for the box set (-7-7). For more information, see www.porchlight.com, or to order, call PorchLight Inspire at 615-754-5754.

Leaders collaborate across generations to shore up Christian essentials

Best-selling author Charles Colson turns what many have called his most important book into an intergenerational conversation as part of a national campaign to define and defend

Sixpence None the Richer, which called it quits in 2004, is re-entering the music world with its first new full-length album in six years. Fans of Leigh Nash and the band may find it surprising that, after such a long hiatus, the first project is a Christmas album, The Dawn of Grace (0-67003-08152-8, Nettwerk Music Group/Provident-Integrity), which released Oct. 14.

“We’ve got to re-introduce ourselves, and we’ve never really done a holiday record before,” Nash said. “Once we got into the swing of (making the album), we enjoyed ourselves so much. … We also didn’t have to...

Popular artist's new album emphasizes doing and truth telling

"A lot of it for me really got started in my heart. I got on my face. And that's where everything starts. You get distracted building your own kingdom." —Jeremy Camp

Jeremy Camp is crackling with Scripture references and is eager to talk about his new album, Speaking Louder Than Before, which releases in late November. He is a multi-Dove-Award-winning artist who has four previous albums to his name, but Camp talks about this new record as if it's his first.