Well, we'd heard that Nickelodeon was going to be coming out with Ni Hao, Kai-lan items last Xmas, and when they didn't, thought that might be the end of that for the program as well. But when we got home and resumed shopping like normal American consumers (I went two weeks without stepping into a Target. But there's a patch for that.), this is what we came across:
Not just one or two items, but a whole endcap - plus clothing over in the girls' and toddlers' sections, too!
Oh, and school supplies!
This doll is now sitting on Wynn's bed:
She got the Mr. Fluffy Bake Shop block set, but has no idea this is still sitting on a high shelf in her room, waiting for the right moment to appear.
Are we bad parents for so quickly jumping onto a branding bandwagon? We tried hard, really, to keep the Disney princesses out of the house. And there will be no Barbies (he says, now.)
But Kai-lan is a really good show, well-written, not pushing anything except thinking things through, working hard, and helping your friends. Plus, you know, she's Chinese. And they teach Mandarin words.
You can get Spanish vocabulary pretty much anywhere, anytime in children's programming anymore. (Dragon Tales? I thought dragons spoke Welsh, or um, Mandarin...) But this is the only half-hour in the day where our daughter gets that cultural and linguistic identification. (Our local PBS station pulled Sagwa...)
Plus, she's so darn cute. They actually care about the art in this show, unlike a certain other bilingual young lady living in a tropical area who has a talking monkey friend...
"Baba, enough with the picture taking already."
