Nelly & Nora
Episode 42: "Kite Surfing" (7 minutes)
Ireland: Geronimo Productions
CBeebies, Monday 23 October, 17:50
Ireland has experienced something of an animation boom in the past few years, thanks to generous arts investment and tax breaks from the government. I hadn't heard of this series before, but it follows the Irish tradition of being charming, quality stuff.
The key to its charm is in its simplicity. It's a simple story aimed a very young audience (under 3's) about a family visiting the beach on a windy day, and the art style compliments this perfectly. Although it's digitally animated, it has a handmade, paper collage feel to it, like an infinitely more innocent version of South Park. The characters are designed to look like they were drawn by children...notably, their hair looks like pencil scribbles.
Using your noggin
In terms of educational content, there was nothing blatant. However, I did note a continuing theme of problem solving. The older sister finds that her bucket and spade are being blown away by the wind, so she works out to weigh them down with rocks. She then helps her little sister by doing the same with her belongings. When the kite blows away, it gets tangled up with a "boogie board"... the girls work out that they can use this as a wind-powered ride. But it isn't strong enough to carry them, so the younger sister suggests that they attach more kites to it, which works. It demonstrates a very basic type of scientific thinking, and it's nice to see this sort of thing coming from female characters, rather than baking and dresses and whatnot.
In terms of social development, there was nice demonstration of two sisters getting along with each other, and the older one acting a little bit more responsible. I also noted that the parents didn't play any part in the plot whatsoever, but we kept cutting back to them, just to reinforce the message that the children were always playing within their parent's line of sight and were not unsupervised.
Overall a very nice little cartoon, and although not aimed at my target audience, it does demonstrate how you can include a little educational content without ramming facts down the kids' throats like Cat in the Hat did.
Available to watch online until 20 November 2017.
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