A relatively new show, the main characters are ten-year-old Hispanic twins who live in an apartment with their mother and father, right across from their grandmother, who plays a stable and supportive role in their lives.
While Maya and Miguel are twins, they certainly are not identical. Maya is impulsive, a little scatterbrained, and always ready to leap before she looks. Her intentions are good, but she rarely thinks things through, and often gets herself in trouble. Miguel is the cautious twin, following his sister around with a look of perpetual worry on his face, just waiting to catch her when she falls. When they work together, they’re a pretty good team. She keeps him from being too serious, and he saves her from her own exuberance.
This show teaches many lessons about compassion for those that are different from us, as evidenced in the storyline about the boy with one arm who comes to live in the neighborhood. Maya wants to leap in and do everything for him, but Miguel recognizes that this boy has talents that go far beyond what Maya gives him credit for, and needs their friendship, not their pity. There is a strong undercurrent of family solidarity as we see the grandmother step in to help, and observe the respect shown to her as the matriarch of the family.
If I were to offer any criticism, it would be this: throughout the show, the characters speak Spanish interspersed with English as a regular part of the dialogue. I like this idea. Children can pick up a foreign language much quicker than adults, and if they start hearing it when they’re young, it stays with them. However, sometimes it’s hard to know what the words mean. Much of the time, the English equivalent is given right after, but there are occasions where it’s very difficult to know what is being said. I would like it better if I always knew the translation for the Spanish phrase, so I knew how to use it properly.
Overall, I think it’s a good show and my children enjoy it. Educationally, it teaches social skill development and family relations, and I don’t find it too terribly annoying, either.
Tristi’s Score: 8 for Education, 7 for Entertainment, and the Parent Annoyance Factor is 1.
