Elmo's World - Flowers, Bananas & More [VHS]

Flowers, Bananas & More--so titled, presumably, because Flowers, Bananas & Hair sounds kind of yucky--culls everybody's favorite 3-year-old monster's investigations of those things in a 50-minute tape. The Flowers episode cuts away from Elmo's crayon-filled playroom to follow a real, live boy in his quest to grow a plant. Through Elmo's lively voiceover, we learn that by filling a glass with a paper towel, a bean, and some water you can grow a bean pod, which is just what Elmo does, along with interviewing a friendly cactus and showing us a homemade video of Stinky the Plant, back in his world. In Bananas Mr. Noodle's usual bumbling with the object in question (Is it a telephone? A horn? A pen?) is a barrel of laughs, and we meet Top Banana, a spectacles- and bow tie-clad chap who brings his breed's health benefits to light. Hair, the final segment, is especially enlightening because every manner of the curious stuff shows up for a brief but thoughtful examination. By tuning us in to the Hair Channel, which is featuring a cartoon called "The Kingdom Where Everybody Wore His Hair the Same Way," Elmo leads us to the truth about hair: kinky or straight, short or long, everybody's got it, and what a person chooses to do with it doesn't count for much. Though it's bound to be a repeat for most kids, this is a tape that'll grow on budding botanists, stylists, and Elmo groupies in general. (Ages 3 to 7.) --Tammy La Gorce