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In the grand tradition of Alice, Dorothy, Milo, and the Pevensie children, Coraline enters a portal to a magical world that is both thrilling and terrifying, one that will both enchant her and demand her greatest resources of courage and integrity. And it will teach her that she does being given whatever she wants is not what she thought -- that what she thinks she wants may not be what she wants after all.

Coraline (voice of Dakota Fanning) is bored and lonely. She and her parents have just moved into a new home and she does not know anyone. Her mother (voice of Teri Hatcher) and father (voice of John Hodgman, who plays the PC in the Mac commercials) are distracted and busy with work. While they type away furiously on their computers about gardening, they never actually go outside and plant anything. Coraline meets her neighbors, a pair of one-time performers (voices of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), a man training singing mice (voice of Ian McShane), and a boy her age named Wybie (voice of Robert Bailey Jr.), to whom she takes an immediate dislike.

She explores her surroundings and finds a mysterious locked door. Her mother tells her since the house was converted to make apartments it only opens onto a brick wall. But when she tries it herself, it opens into a tube-shaped corridor that leads to a place very like but also very unlike her own home and neighborhood. Everything is brighter and more colorful. The mother and father tell her that they are her Other parents. They sound just like her real parents and they look like them, too, except that they are utterly devoted and attentive and generous, and except for their eyes, which are sewn-on black buttons.

The Other world is enchanting for a while, with all kinds of diversions and performances. Many, like the Other parents, echo the places and characters from home. But then it begins to feel too synthetic and a little creepy. When the Other mother asks her sweetly to replace her eyes with buttons, Coraline goes home. But home is not the same. Something has happened and she will have to return to the Other place for an adventure that will require all of her courage, perseverance, and some growing up, too.

Coraline must follow the storyline and grow disenchanted with the Other place but we have the luxury of reveling in it. The creepier it gets, the more mesmerizing the visuals, ravishingly grotesque and dazzlingly inventive when the Other Mother suddenly elongates, her cheekbones sticking out like flying buttresses and her arms and legs getting spider-y. This is the first stereoscopic 3D film made in the painstakingly meticulous stop-motion system in which no more than 2-4 seconds can be completed each day because every frame requires as many as a thousand tiny adjustments. The 3D effect is all-encompassing and utterly entrancing as we feel as though we are inside the Other world as its uneasy false cheeriness slides away and we discover what is really going on. Like her parents, Coraline has been separated from authenticity of experience, in her case because she is a child. But the journey to the Other world shows her that she has what she needs to become more fully herself and to find a more vivid and vibrant life in the place she once thought of as drab and uninvolving.

PBS has an excellent online resource for parents about the way that media shapes children's views of the world, with separate sections for preschoolers, grade schoolers, pre-teens and teens, with tips for each age to help children understand media and think about it more critically. It even has a parent guide to texting acronyms like G2G (got to go). Kids are not the only ones who can use some help with media!

The Institute for Humane Education is offering an online program for teachers
called Sowing Seeds Online. Humane education provides the knowledge, tools, and motivation to enable students to become engaged and fulfilled solutions for a peaceful and sustainable world. It is a month-long online course for secondary school teachers that begins on May 1, 2009.

Sowing Seeds Online provides teachers with an opportunity to dive into the issues of humane education, enliven their teaching, enrich their courses, and help their students become ever more engaged citizens.

* Teachers will develop new techniques and ideas to make their classes more rewarding, interesting, and meaningful.

* They will learn new strategies and develop tools and ideas for teaching about the most important issues of our time, while interacting online with other educators and the course advisors.

* Participants will receive a copy of The Power and Promise of Humane Education by Zoe Weil, President and Cofounder of the Institute for Humane Education.

You've heard of educational software that teaches you something but this is educational software that teaches scientists something. Foldit is a Tetris-like game that is easy to understand but a challenge to master. That's what makes it fun. What makes it important is that it was designed by a very serious team of scientists based on models of proteins as a way of furthering their research. As people all over play the game, they are sending back to the scientists important data that will help them learn more about the way proteins work.

The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

Calculations involving spatial understanding are among the few that are still done most effectively by humans instead of computers. As people work through the levels of the game, they are performing thousands of calculations and experiments. Some of them have even become so interested they have done a little research of their own. Others are just having fun working through the game and competing with each other online. PRI's Studio 360 has a terrific segment on Foldit and a video clip to show how the game works.

One of the tenderest stories in the Bible is the tale of Ruth, the young widow who chose to stay with her mother-in-law, Naomi. Although it fills only four short chapters, the two characters are vivid and their story involving and touching. Joined in their love for Ruth's late husband, they stay together until Naomi arranges for Ruth to marry the kind Boaz.

In the 1950's, Selma Kritzer Silverberg wrote Naomi's Song, the story of Naomi's early life, but her manuscript was not discovered until 2005 by Silverberg's daughter, who felt that its story and its message would be meaningful to young women. The daughter, Judy Vida, writes in the introduction that the book's publication "brings to fruition [Silverberg's] lifelong goals of teaching, Bible storytelling, and empowering girls to have 'that necessary courage and conviction.'"

Silverberg immerses the reader in the era, giving us insights into the experiences and qualities that made Naomi such a strong and dedicated woman. She faces enormous challenges in her early life and she must overcome personal tragedy and community upheaval. She responds with loyalty and perseverance, developing the strength and understanding that would make her a wise and loving mother-in-law for Ruth. It is easy to understand why Silverberg's daughter would want to share this story with others. Like the story her mother tells, the story behind it is an example of sharing history and values l'dor vador, from generation to generation.

I have one copy of the book to give away to the first person who sends me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with "Naomi" in the subject line. Good luck!

Social network sites risk infantilizing the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading neuroscientist. The UK paper The Guardian reports that Lady Greenfield,...

The Chicago Tribune reports on a class that teaches teenagers "voluntary simplicity," giving up one something significant each month and thinking, talking, and writing about what it feels like. Begun last fall as a project to inspire mindfulness in the...

Do you have a Jonas Brothers fan in your family? Or maybe a fanatic? Some parents have found their children's devotion to the latest pop stars a little disconcerting. One father suggested that his daughter's enthusiasm might merit a discussion...

Disney reveals the bloopers and accidents behind the scenes at "High School Musical 3: Senior Year." It's fun to see how the young stars bounce back from their mistakes with such good spirits and good humor. Get ready to giggle...

A Valentine for my readers -- this YouTube compilation of 10 great first kisses from recent television series, including "The O.C," "One Tree Hill," "Veronica Mars," and "Gilmore Girls."...

This week we observe one of the great strengths of the system created by the founding fathers, the orderly transition to a new administration. In honor of the outgoing and incoming Presidents of the United States, take a look at...

NatureTech is a terrific new DVD series from the Smithsonian Network that shows us some of the best ideas about energy, flight, and building materials technology come from observing nature. Biomimetics is the new science of looking to nature for...

The documentary The Black Candle: A Kwanzaa Celebration, narrated by Maya Angelou, uses the holiday of Kwanzaa to explore the African-American experience. The holiday was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor of Africana studies, as a way to...

A teacher whose budget would no longer cover the expense of printing out his math tests has resorted to selling ad space on calculus quizzes and exams. Rancho Bernardo teacher Tom Farber says that his budget for print-outs is $300...

To the surprise of no one but the Hollywood insiders, none of whom apparently have ever spoken to a teenage girl, "Twilight" set records at the box office this weekend, exceeding all predictions to bring in over $70 million, almost...

Today is the birthday of Lucas Grabeel, an extraordinarily gifted performer I've seen in four different movies in the past few weeks. He's still best known for playing Ryan, the twin brother of the scheming Sharpay, in the High School...

Parents often fear that their kids are wasting their time clicking around the web. But a new study on teen use of online media commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation found that "America's youth are developing important social and technical skills...

When the first five minutes of a film show us a wedding, a graduation, a pregnancy, some kisses, and two grave sites, followed by a reunion scene involving shrieking and hugging, we know we are in for an irresistible saga...

Be sure to take a look at the excellent Ten Tips for Parenting the Facebook Generation from Beliefnet's Hesham Hassaballa. Technology has made the risks and humiliations and cliquishness of the early teen years exponentially more treacherous, and these guidelines...

The Washington Post reports on the first study to link teen pregnancies to sexual content on television. The study is being published today in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The authors found a "strong association" between teen...

There is no question that Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings) are destined for True Love. For one thing, they have the same taste in music. Nick is still making mixes for the girl who dumped him (Alexis Dziena...

Vampires are really big this year. Breaking Dawn, the fourth volume in Stephanie Meyers' Twilight series was the most eagerly anticipated book since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And one of the most popular events at Comic-Con was the...

The writer of the delightful Clockstoppers has written and directed an unpretentious little comedy about a crazy "sport" -- racing boxes on wheels. It makes the most of its low budget with an easy-going good humor in this goofy but...

The authors of the book "So Sexy So Soon," Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne, say that children are constantly bombarded by the media and advertisers with images and portrayals of hyper-sexuality. Thong panties, padded bras, and risqué Halloween costumes for...

One of the most thoughtful and knowledgeable movie critics I know, Desson Thomson, appeared on NPR's "Weekend Edition" this week to talk to Scott Simon about what ties "Dark Knight" and the new documentary "American Teen" together -- the way...

Teen Ink is a great resource for teens and a great opportunity, too. Published for teens by teens, it is a national teen magazine, book series, and website devoted entirely to teenage writing and art. Distributed through classrooms by English...