''Wiggins In Storyland''

"WIGGINS IN STORYLAND" Windows Media Vision Suggested list $59.95

Parenthood gives new meaning to the phrase "Peace at any price," but if you're lucky enough to own a multimedia PC, hours of peace may be had for around $60.

"Wiggins in Storyland" is a writing and entertainment tool, sort of WordPerfect as it might have been created by 4-to-9-year-olds. But it's solid software, greatly amusing even for grown-ups, and it's educational without being stuffy.

Wiggins is a worm, a bookworm. He lives in a tree equipped with an elevator, and there are three main things you can do with Wiggins: play in his room, read books he has written or write books of your own.

Which sounds boring, until you scope out Wiggins' room. Just about everything in it hides an amusing or instructional surprise. On the bookshelf, click on a book labeled Twain and the book pops out, opens and produces a frog that reads Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County" - in a Missouri twang, no less.

But Wiggins is more than passive. The child gets to write, illustrate, score and print his own multimedia stories and leave them in the system for others to see.

There's even a utility to handle kid-level writer's block: Click on the light bulb icon and get a suggestion for beginning a story. There's also a microphone option so the kids can record their own voice-overs and sound effects.

All this should be great fun for the targeted age group, which means a child might play with it for 30-to-40 minutes at a shot, long enough for parents, say, to cook dinner, hold a sane conversation with another adult or even read a newspaper.