Sofia the First is a show on the Disney and Disney Junior channels that my three-year-old (soon to be four) daughter loves. I think, as Susan and I watch the show with her each time, that the things that are most appealing to her about it are: 1) Sofia was a commoner whose mother married a king (so Sofia has to learn how to behave as a princess behaves) 2)Sofia has a magic amulet that allows her to converse with animals, her favorite being rabbit Clover and 3) Sofia learns on her own, often being wiser than her mother and stepfather.
My daughter likes to watch the same episodes again and again, her current favorites being "Substitute Cedric" and "The Enchanted Feast." In the former some pranksters from Hexley Hall, the school for sorcerers, invade Royal Prep while the teachers, good fairies from Sleeping Beauty, are at a fairy convention and Cedric, the Royal Sorcerer, is the substitute teacher. Cedric is immobilized by the pranksters but teaches the children "the sorcerer's secret" by singing a song about it. The sorcerer's secret is never to give up and, with this in mind, the students stop the pranksters from filling Royal Prep with bubbles in order to float it away. In "The Enchanted Feast" the bad fairy Miss Nettle disguises herself as the sorcerer Sasha and immobilizes Cedric and the royal family (King Roland II, Queen Miranda and Sofia's stepbrother and stepsister, James and Amber) and attempts to steal Sofia's magic amulet. Sofia stops Miss Nettle with the help of Clover and the appearance of Snow White (Disney princesses appear regularly on the show to advise Sofia).
The show is didactic in a low-key way and encourages tolerance and understanding: Sofia stays friends with commoners Jade and Ruby and brings the trolls out of exile (they were mistakenly banished to their caves by a previous king). The computer-generated animation is, by my standards, rather primitive (minimal movement and facial expression) but the animation is carried off rather successfully by the voices, particularly Ariel Winter as the eight-year-old Sofia (Winter herself is 17) and the songs, written by John Kavanaugh and Erica Rothschild. The shows are all directed by Disney TV veteran Jamie Mitchell.
I am particularly impressed by the power to talk to animals that Sofia's magic amulet gives her. I read Hugh Lofting's Doctor Doolittle books (written in the 1920's) when I was a child and wished that I could talk to animals; I knew they would be more understanding and sympathetic than the adult humans I had to deal with.
