Great Kids Movies for the Summer

[afwriter]

It's almost time for school to be out and with that comes long days where we have to keep the kids entertained. Does anyone have any suggestions on great kids movies for the summer?

[Neat&Pete]

Some of the best kids movies I remember are from long ago, but they are still so worth watching. Produced by Walt Disney studios in  the 1960s, I call them the forgotten kids movies. They are live-action, feature length films that I loved as a kid and showed to my own daughter as soon as she was able to sit through a full-length show. One of these forgotten movies is Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus, starring  Kevin Corcoran. It's about a  boy who feels unwanted at home and runs away to join the circus. Another is Pollyanna, starring the great Jane Wyman and Richard Egan, with Halley Mills in the title role of Pollyanna. (Haley Mills also starred in the original Parent Trap, another Disney full-length feature, released in 1961.) Pollyanna is an optimistic, fun-loving orphan who comes to live with Aunt Polly, her mother's sister, a rich, cold, overbearing matron. Pollyanna, of course, steals her heart away. Also released in 1960 was The Swiss Family Robinson, the adventure of a ship-wrecked French family fleeing the Napoleonic wars.  I can still  picture the family riding an ostrich, like a pony, along a sandy beach and living in a tree house. All of these movies are based on best-selling children's books and contain lessons of other times and places, so you could pair movie-watching with the dreaded summer reading list. There are many more Disney live-action kids movies from that era, so check it out. And happy viewing.