Dancing through Springtime flowers and rays of Summers sun…catching white snowflakes on your nose, Running Autumn leaves that float from trees on high, with our love that’s bigger than the sky. Guess how much I love you…

Inspired by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram’s best-selling series of books, ‘Guess How Much I Love You – The Adventures of Little Nutbrown Hare’ is a cute series for kids that follows Little Nutbrown Hare and his friends as they explore the meadow and learn valuable life lessons.

At the end of each of the 11 minute episodes, Little Nutbrown Hare and his father discuss the lesson(s) he learned that day and he asks his dad…”Guess how much I love you?” and the two joking talk about just how much love they have for one another.

The DVD contains the following episodes:

Favorite Thing

Little Field Mouse finds a flower which she declares is her ‘most favorite thing in all the meadow’. Little Nutbrown Hare borrows it for the night to show to his father and promises to keep it safe. Unfortunately the flower blows away during the windy night and now Little Nutbrown Hare has to find it so that Little Field Mouse isn’t sad.

Lesson: Feelings/Fixing mistakes

 

Fly Away Home

A butterfly lands on Little Field Mouse and she gets compliments on it from a number of the other little field animals, making her feel special. So Little Field Mouse tries to help Little Nutbrown Hare find butterfly if his own so he can feel special too. Eventually a ladybug chooses him.

Lesson: Friendship and being special
 

Follow Me

On his way to visit Little Field Mouse, Little Nutbrown Hare stumbles upon a little duck who starts to follow him everywhere. They don’t know what kind of animal he is, so they call him Little Yellow Quack and set out on an adventure to try to figure out what type of animal their new young friend is.

Lesson: Taking care of others

 

I Promise

Little Field Mouse is collecting Autumn leaves and asks Little Nutbrown Hare to help her find the prettiest leaves, but he already promised Little Redwood Fox he’d play with her, but he promises Little Field Mouse he’ll help her after lunch. Unfortunately he forgets about his first promise and promises Little Redwood Fox he’ll return to play after lunch. He then tries to keep his promise to both by running back and forth, soon realizing that breaking his promise to one of them would have been easier.

Lesson: Keeping promises and knowing when it’s better to just tell the truth and admit when you make a mistake.

 

All Fall Down

Little Nutbrown Hare is helping a Little Gray Squirrel collect acorns for Winter. They and their friends start playing games with the acorns, but Little Redwood Fox gets too excited and keeps accidentally ruining all of the games. Little Gray Squirrel suggests they play without Little Redwood Fox, but they decide to find another game instead that they can all play together.

Lesson: Learning to compromise

 

New Friend

Little Nutbrown Hare and his father go for a walk through the quiet winter woods when the discover the tracks of a baby deer. Little Nutbrown Hare and Little Field Mouse try befriend the little spotty deer.

Lesson: Making new friends
 

Leaf Shade

It’s a hot Summer day and Little Nutbrown Hare and Little Field Mouse are enjoying the shade of a big tree. They try to think of a way to bring the shade anywhere in the meadow with them, when Little Gray Squirrel shows up with some giant leaves to give them shade. Little Gray Squirrel starts getting jealous of all of the complements that Little Nutbrown Hare’s largest leaf is getting. He regrets giving Little Nutbrown Hare the leaf and wants it back, which upsets the others.

Lesson: Sharing and the rules of giving a present.

What’s Included on the DVD:

Episodes:

• 7 episodes of the series (80 min)
  

  • “Favorite Thing”
  • “Fly Away Home”
  • “Follow Me”
  • “I Promise”
  • “All Fall Down”
  • “New Friend”
  • “Leaf Shade”
• Video: 16×9 1.78:1
• Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0
• Subtitles: English SDH

Extras:

None

Final Thoughts:

While my daughters (ages 4 and 6) were familiar with the book Guess How Much I Love You, they had never seen this animated series before. Both were captivated throughout the entire 80 minute, 7 episode program and kept asking how many more episodes there were left…and were a little sad when they reached the final one. There we’re any real laugh out loud moments, but the stories were interesting and well presented and each does a nice job of conveying a particular like lesson in a way that is easy for a child to grasp (a huge plus in my book). I even found myself entertained as well.

By the end of their marathon watching, one thing did cross my inquisitive little girls’ minds and that was “Where was Little Nutbrown Hare’s mom?” I have no idea…they never tell you, but before I could come up with an answer, the older one said… “Maybe he doesn’t have a mom.” My girls tend to be pretty curious, so if your kids are too…you may have to be prepared to field this one.

The 16×9 widescreen presentation of the episodes looked great and the animation was nice and crisp. The sound, while only 2.0 Dolby Digital was easy to hear and we were able to keep the volume at a reasonable level throughout the viewing.

The only thing that was lacking were any sort of special features. It would have been nice if they had included a short featurette that showed more of the process of turning the book into this animated series. I’m sure that both my girls and I would have found that particularly interesting.

Even without any special features, the seven short 11 minute episodes and 80 minute total running time provides a nice amount of content that can easily be consumed either in a single viewing or one episode at a time when a short little play break is needed. My girls enjoyed this series and I suspect your little ones will too.