The Wacky History Lessons of Night at the Museum

Here's a movie, a video game, and a book that you can enjoy with your kids this weekend. You can find more reviews of kids' fare at XXtra Small [2], our new database of reviews for kids' books, movies, shows, and games.

Movie: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Great jokes from the A-list cast (Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson star; Mindy Kaling, Ricky Gervais, and Jonah Hill make cameos) may go over a 9-year-old's head. But is it worth a viewing, anyway, for the sake of a wacky history lesson? Here's our evaluation [3].

Video game: Rhythm Heaven

To the beat of music, the mini-games ask you to assemble products, fill up a robot with fuel, pick vegetables, play pingpong. But is the assessment of players' skills too cheeky for sensitive gamers? Read our review here [4].

Book: The Enemy

How do we talk to our kids about war? It's tempting to turn to schoolyard analogies, but those comparisons are dishonest—and disrespectful of war victims. Davide Cali's The Enemy: A Book About Peace [5] has the opposite problem: It depicts war's dehumanizing nature so acutely that it may not be suitable for 4- to 8-year-olds. Read our take here [6].