Series · Netflix · 2016
Ask the Storybots
Curiosity with a job to do. Good for the little ones, in a short sitting.
A child asks why the sky is blue, or where the water goes, and the Storybots treat the question as a job. That is the right use of a screen for a small person: not a trance, a look at how the world is put together. The songs are sticky. The visits are short. Stop before the queue becomes the babysitter.
Watch one question, then answer the child's next question yourself, even if you have to look it up together in a book.
The eight
Industry
7/10
They go find out how a thing works. The answer is the episode.
Household
4/10
A child's question is treated as worth a trip. No family beyond that.
Piety
5/10
Wonder is the point, and it is aimed at the real world.
Courage
4/10
They are willing to look foolish on the way to an answer.
Republic
4/10
Experts and places exist. The world is bigger than the living room.
Temperance
7/10
It does not sneer, and it does not scare.
Truth
8/10
A question gets a real answer, not a moral pasted on a fantasy.
Stewardship
6/10
It hands a child the habit of asking how.
Live historicallyAsk the youngest child what they actually want to know. Find the answer in the room or a book, not in another episode.