When I was four, I watched a movie where the villain is an insidious evil spirit with a glowing face locked within a large, heavy old book. It fully preoccupied my scaredy-cat mind for the rest of the day, and after I was tucked into bed that night, I climbed out to pluck all the oversized books from my bedroom shelves and heave them into a pile in the hallway, where they couldn’t hurt me. “What are all these books doing here?” I heard my mom tut later through the door. The movie? The Care Bears Movie from 1985. (And I’m not alone.)
As a child with a robust imagination, movies affected me deeply, and many of my favorites from that period have retained their magic in my adult eyes: The Neverending Story, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Secret of NIMH, Auntie Mame, A League of Their Own.
These beloved films (not the Care Bears one) are all included in A24’s new book for young movie lovers, Hey Kids, Watch This!, which offers some 100 prime choices for family movie night. Spanning decades, genres, moods, and languages, the recommendations are divided into four sections—Preschoolers (ages two to four), Little Kids (five to seven), Big Kids (eight and nine), and Tweens (10 to 12)—and, crucially, are all available on streaming services. They’re sure both to spark the imaginations of cinephiles in training and satisfy adults sick of, say, Bluey or Frozen.
Photo: Courtesy of A24
