CD-Rom -- ''Anno's Learning Games''

"Anno's Learning Games" Putnam New Media (703) 860-3375 Windows, Macintosh $35

In "Anno's Learning Games," those masters of the intellect at Berkeley Learning Technologies and Putnam New Media have come up with animated learning games they call "magic and math, logic and laughs."

This new CD-ROM, inspired by Mitsumasa Anno's book "Anno's Math Games," features Kriss and Kross, two Brothers Grimm-like characters who hang around to give kids helpful hints when they get stuck and otherwise need a helpful hand, soothing music and just the right amount of animation.

The games:

Cards - Forget about spades and clubs. Here you can have the Ace of Pigs, if you desire. Once you've chosen your decks and suits, you and three other players try all kinds of ways to draw to inside straights.

Guess My Rule - My 9-year-old daughter caught on to this one right away. At the point where two skating rinks cross - one for Kriss and the other for Kross - a common object is placed, say a table with wheels on it. A bunch of other objects are outside the circle, and your job is to place each one in a group within either Kriss' or Kross' rink. Four-legged animals go on one side, while objects with wheels go on another. Then you have to figure out what the rules are for each rink.

Guessing Machine - Try to outsmart the machine, which asks you if the object is an animal, has feathers, swims and so on.

Storymaker - My post 10-year-old son mastered this one without much hesitation. Click on characters, then decide whether they should be colorful, yodeling, splashing in a bathtub, and so on.

Tangrams - These exercises have you re-creating shape puzzles by placing the shapes correctly on an outline. Advanced students will get free-form outlines.

Waterballoons - This is a fun game of trying to figure out which kid is going to drop a water balloon on Kross and catching the balloon in a basket. This appealed to my son more than my daughter.

Weighing - You have to figure out how much dragons, boys and girls and other objects weigh - alone or together - to balance a scale.

All in all, this beats just about anything on TV, except, perhaps, for "Mr. Ed." It's a highbrow "Sesame Street," time well spent away from the tube, with lots of charm and enough surprises to keep your kids and their friends away from the latest LucasArts game for a few days.