HBO Home Entertainment presents El Perro y El Gato: The Adventure Begins/La Aventura Comienza, a collection of short animated vignettes that also run on HBO Latino. This DVD collection marks the debut of the series.

Take one fast-talking, tail-wagging dog (El Perro), add a laid-back fat purple cat (El Gato), plunk them down in storylines told through a constant mix of both English and Spanish, and you get an entirely new approach to bilingual education. Many children's programs claim to offer foreign-language introduction but do little more than pepper the story with a few vocabulary words here and there. El Perro y El Gato delivers a true bilingual experience, combining dialogue, action, clever animation, and on-screen text to help little viewers understand the narrative and acquire some real foreign-language skills.

The storylines center around activities familiar to kids: Getting ready for the first day of school; visiting the beach; touring the zoo; frolicking at a playground - all played out through vibrant animation, peppy background music, witty sound effects, and comical sight gags. Imagine plump purple El Gato wearing a backpack, for example.

This DVD collection only offers four vignettes, totaling just 18 minutes of program content, so $9.95 may strike parents as much pretty steep. If you can get past the price tag, El Perro and El Gato prove to be a quirky, comical and effective pair promoting bilingual education.

Other titles from this series include: From Here to There/De Aquí Para Allá; Unleashed/Sin Correa; Together Again/Juntos Otra Vez