Rolie Polie Olie - Growing Upsie Daisy

By the shape of things, Rolie Polie Olie's angle-free existence ought to be all smooth sailing. Turns out, though, that 6-year-old robots slip into family skirmishes as clumsily as their kid counterparts do. Sending the point into overdrive is Growing Upsie Daisy , in which a daydream about ditching the confines of childhood delivers Rolie, Zowie, and Billy into a twilight zone of ungainly grownups; Uncle Gizmo dips into a scrapbook to help Zowie zap the younger-sibling blues; and Olie apes his father until he figures out growing up ought not to happen too fast. Planet Rolie Polie's boldly colored, liquid-like citizens are cosmic Midwesterners, right down to the accent, and we love them for the same reasons--they're wholesome, they're jovial, and, for a clan of robots, they're remarkably unstiff. Upsie Daisy , with its subtle getting-along themes, holds sway over even the squirmiest preschoolers, meriting many rewinds. --Tammy La Gorce