#THE SMOOZE MOVIE#

Books present new words to young listeners, parents actively highlight those new words, expand on them, and help to make them memorable for the child (e.g., Clark, 2010). Shared storybook reading is a triangular interaction-the adult reader, the child, and the book conspire to create a meaningful experience each time a book is shared and one of the many benefits for young children who regularly share in storybooks with their parents is the positive impact that has on their vocabulary growth (Senechal et al., 1996 DeTemple and Snow, 2003 Blewitt et al., 2009 Farrant and Zubrick, 2013). Recently, my 3-year-old son asked, “Guess what's in my pocket?” then paused for a beat and exclaimed, “a wocket!” And, while thankfully there was not actually a small Seussian monster in his pants, my son had reminded me of just how well he is able to learn words (even nonsense words) from storybooks, and in fact just how strongly rhyme must influence that process. Thus rhyme is not only facilitative for learning, but when the novel vocabulary is specifically in a position where it is predictable from the rhymes, it is most accessible. Additionally, when parents acted as the storybook readers in Experiment 2, many of them distinctly paused before target words in the predictive rhyme condition and for their children a stronger predictive rhyme advantage surfaced. In tests of retention and identification children showed greatest novel name learning in the predictive rhyme condition in both between-subjects (Experiment 1) and within-subjects (Experiment 2) comparisons. Two- to 4-year-old children heard rhyming stanzas naming novel monsters under three conditions: A non-rhyme condition in which novel monster names appeared as unrhymed elements within a rhymed stanza, a non-predictive rhyme condition in which the novel names were the rhymed element in the first line of a stanza, and a predictive rhyme condition in which the monster name came as the rhymed element in the last line of the stanza after a description of the features that distinguished him. In two experiments, we tested whether rhyme, when used to help children anticipate new words would make those words easier to learn. Cute, but not quite as unique.Rhyme, which is ubiquitous in the language experiences of young children, may be especially facilitative to vocabulary learning because of how it can support active predictions about upcoming words. The Smooze sort of had a cameo in that newer pony cartoon, but as an eyeless green jelly in a hat, which grows larger the more it eats. I'm not so sure it was even originally written or conceived as having the faces or the ability to sing, and it all might have been kind of last-minute.

They never address it like a being, or even really acknowledge that it's behaving as a sentient force.

The Smooze is a fun 'monster,' though I feel like its nature as a creature or character wasn't all that literal. It's often noted how much its googly-eyed faces resemble Grimer, with villains wiki wildly assuming it was the actual inspiration for Grimer and Muk, though it's literally just eyeballs added to some purple gunk countless other slime monsters throughout popular culture have this design as well, so the only connection here is the coincidental choice in color scheme. The Smooze is technically a witch's brew, and besides its capacity for physical destruction - including the fact that it hardens like cement - anyone touching it becomes mean and grouchy.

#THE SMOOZE MOVIE#

The villains of this movie were overall so fun and so well animated, I often forget they were from a My Little Pony film and not some sort of Ghibli fantasy anime. Creature Review requests are a part of a patreon bonus reward! For more information, see the first review!

The smooze