Dora, la exploradora

All three of my kids and their friends aged 2 - 5, absolutely love Dora the Explorer. Dora is a five year old girl who sets out on a different adventure each episode with her friend Boots the monkey and her talking back pack. "Back Pack" has objects to assist on her journey, of which children can decide which would be the best item to use to get round different obstacles. Along the way she also encounters different characters to assist her. Some of these characters only speak Spanish so is a great way of introducing the language to infants. Educationally it is very stimulating, teaching pre-schoolers the basics in counting, colors, shapes and sizes with the introduction of Spanish. It also brings to children the understanding of different cultures. Highly recommended.

This is an excellent show for children to see. It's not an adult show, but it get's the children to learn how to count and to even understand Spanish. It is kind of stupid when it talks to swiper and boots, but it's definately a childrens show. My son loves to watch Dora, he repeats what she says, and he can count to 10 now on his own!I highly recommend this show for children to see! You have to see it to understand, but it's not a show for an adult, it's a show for kids!

As I can see, so far every comment came from English speaking audience.

Well, we live in Hungary, and here the series were translated to Hungarian, with some English phrases in it (which were originally the Spanish ones, I guess). I have a 5 and a 2 year-old daughter, and they both enjoy watching Dora very much. I think this is a very good educational movie! The younger learns special Hungarian words, which she would not know otherwise (eg. volcano). She also enjoys the activity Dora asks us to do. And the older one picked up the English words very fast, and even asked me to teach her more English! Thanks to this cartoon now they tell us to fasten our safety belts when we drive, and the little one learned to count to ten at a very early age. We have most of the parts recorded on video, and they often ask for them. By the way, I couldn't find the information on this site: how many parts are there altogether? If somebody knows, please let me know.

It seems that Dora feels she must yell at all times to get attention, which makes her as pleasant to listen to as fingernails on a blackboard. Even after enduring a few episodes of this show, I'm still trying to figure out what the creators think they are teaching? The few words of Spanish that are used aren't enough to form simple phrases, so why are they there? Mostly, it seems like they're trying to teach prepositions (up, down, through, etc.) and they're padding it with a few Spanish words to fill out the half-hour episode. I think her parents should keep better tabs on her and around the house more instead of letting her wander through forests and valleys all the time. That, and there's something evil about her eyes.

Dora is one of the few, if any female stars of an animated show. The problem solving, bilingualism and non-violent approach is a breath of fresh air in the blast-em-up world of children's animated shows. How could anyone argue with that?