Favorite Children’s Films

You will know best at what age your individual child is ready to handle a given subject matter.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM CATEGORY: Preschoolers and UP

The Three Caballeros (1944)

Make Mine Music (1946)

Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

Melody Time (1948)

Cinderella (1950)

Peter Pan (1953)

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Winnie the Pooh (2011)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM CATEGORY: Five and UP

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

The Jungle Book (1967)

Robin Hood (1973)

The Looney, Looney, Looney, Bugs Bunny Movie (1981)

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Aladdin (1992)

Finding Nemo (2003)

Hoodwinked! (2005)

Bolt (2008)

Kung-Fu Panda (2008)

The LEGO Movie (2014)

The Peanuts Movie (2015)

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017)

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM CATEGORY: Ages Six and Up

Dumbo (1941)

Bambi (1942)

Fantasia (1940)

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

The Rescuers (1977)

The Secret of NIMH (1982)

The Little Mermaid (1989)

The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

The Lion King (1994)

Toy Story (1995)

Fantasia 2000 (1999)

Chicken Run (2000)

The Incredibles (2004)

Wall-e (2008)

Up (2009)

Kung-Fu Panda 2 (2011)

The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

Storks (2016)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM CATEGORY: Ages Nine and Up

Animal Farm (1954)

The Hobbit (1977)

Watership Down (1978)

The Return of the King (1980)

A Christmas Carol (2009)

Big Hero 6 (2014)

ANIMATED SHORT FILM CATEGORY

Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)

The Prince and the Pauper (1990)

The Wrong Trousers (1993)

Presto (2008)

The Ballad of Nessie (2011)

Hawaiian Vacation (2011)

LIVE ACTION CATEORY

Baby, Take a Bow (1934)

Heide (1937)

Little Lord Faunterloy (1936)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Miracle on 34^th Street (1947)

Pollyanna (1960)

Swiss Family Robinson (1960)

Marry Poppins (1964)

The Muppet Movie (1979)

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

A Little Princess (1995)

Peter Pan (2003)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part I (2010)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part II (2011)

TELEVISION SPECIAL AND DIRECT TO VIDEO CATEGORY

Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer (1964)

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1964)

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

Mad Monster Party? (1967)

The Little Drummer Boy (1968)

Frosty the Snowman (1969)

Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970)

Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971)

Pixie Hollow Games (2011)

Toy Story of Terror (2013)

The Toy Story that Time Forgot (2014)

Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special (2008)

Tinker Bell: Secret of the Wings (2012)

The Pirate Fairy (2014)

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.