LeapFrog's Little Leaps Grow-with-Me Learning System reaches into the crib for its audience, using the family's DVD player and TV set to create a learning environment in which parents and their babies interact.

It's designed to be used by babies (9-24 months) as well as toddlers (24-36 months) with an accompanying controller that's reversible. Snap out the controller and snap in the side with three large colored buttons for babies, or choose the side that has an outsized joystick surrounded by two buttons for toddlers.

The "Baby Cam" activity features a real baby going for a walk in a stroller. The camera angle is from over the baby's shoulder so that you see what the baby sees. While on the walk, the baby hears a series of sounds. A video stops and asks you to guess what the sound is. Then you are instructed to push a button to see what the baby sees. Pushing any button on the controller reveals the source of the sound; for a "quack," you see a duck swimming in a pond.

At first blush, Little Leaps flies in the face of the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that children younger than age 2 years not watch television. That recommendation is based, in part, on the belief that babies need positive interaction with other children and adults. If you use this system as a framework for talking and playing, then it's not one of simply having a baby watch television.