This is a cd, narrated by Leonard Bernstein, takes kids through Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Saint-Saen's Carnival of the Animals, and Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. We had played this cd for Ben, mainly for the Carnival of the Animals bit, but when we learned that he would be taking a field trip with his preschool class to see a local youth ballet group perform Peter and the Wolf, we made sure to play that for him as well.

I hadn't heard it in a while, but, man, that is a seriously scary story for a young kid. As soon as the French horns started up, Ben's eyes got big and he climbed into my lap for protection. The bassoons were hardly any better, especially since Kari was acting out the parts (a bit too dramatically, perhaps). Although he seemed to be mostly enjoying himself, by the time the wolf had eaten the duck, Ben was so distraught that we had to stop the cd.

A couple of days later we listened the whole way through sans Kari's pantomime and he seemed to thoroughly enjoy about 80% of it and this time was only creeped out by the remaining 20%. When the wolf began snapping at the bird, he covered his ears and told us he didn't like that part, so we fast forwarded to the hunter's entrance.

All of this made me a little skeptical about sending him to see this in person, until I learned that the piece he would be seeing was going to be performed by 4- through 12-yr-olds. Obviously, they didn't portray anything too psychologically damaging and Ben was filled us in on all of the details: the cat climbing the tree, Peter catching the wolf by the tail, etc. He didn't mention the duck being eaten; maybe he closed his eyes at that point.

We played the cd again tonight at his request and he chickened out again when the wolf first appeared. So we watched Bob the Builder instead.