And a child shall lead them

In the early 1970s I lived in Tucson, Ariz., where the progressive-rock radio station featured a hip young DJ named Matt Siegel. I got to know Matt slightly - it's a long story - and hung out with him in Los Angeles a couple of years later. By 1981, both of us resettled in Boston, he'd become the new WXKS-FM morning guy and a rising star on the local dial. Since I wasn't exactly in his station's target demographic, I rarely tuned in, though.

What a difference three decades and two preteenage children make. I'm now part of his captive audience, driving my kids to school in the morning while Matty and crew take listeners' calls and dole out advice (think Lucy in the Peanuts comic strip) to mildly troubled souls. Problem boyfriends, meddling mothers, untrainable pets - Matty tackles them all, usually in a minute or less. I've become a big fan. I even took my 12-year-old, Emma, to a KISS 108 concert last spring. As the tall, balding emcee walked onstage to squeals of approval, I whispered, "Honey, I knew that guy when . . . oh, never mind. Remind me again, which Jonas Brother is Nick?"

JOSEPH P. KAHN

American comedy has four supreme examples of an extended body of work on film: the silent features of Keaton and Chaplin, early and middle Marx Brothers, Preston Sturges's Paramount years, and "The Simpsons."

The first three I discovered on my own (well, Pauline Kael gave a strong shove in the direction of Sturges). The fourth I owe to my son, William. Over the past three or four years, it's been an almost-nightly ritual. Dinner over, table cleared, William and his parents troop to the sofa to watch a "Simpsons" rerun on Channel 25 at 7:30.

It's not as if I hadn't been exposed to "The Simpsons" before. But it had always seemed so hectic to me, relentless even: comedy without a human face. Under William's tutelage, I have come to see otherwise.

Sure, the range of cultural reference, the inventiveness of the slapstick, the acuteness of the social satire are all quite phenomenal. But it's the interplay of the characters that's the abiding glory of "The Simpsons." Watching it night after night, this becomes plain. Equally important to my growing appreciation was the fact of seeing many episodes several times. There's always, always, something I'd previously missed that I now pick up on.

Once I tried to impress William with a bit of name-dropping. Junior year in college I lived in the same entry as George Meyer, one of the show's writers. William couldn't have cared less. For him, "The Simpsons" isn't something created; it just is, like cats and pizza and samurai swords.

Come to think of it, that's how I feel about Groucho, too.

MARK FEENEY

If I had an iPod - yes, there are a few of us without one - it would be loaded with Broadway show tunes, jazz, the American Songbook, and country music. This last category made it to the list reluctantly and recently, thanks to Cameron, my 19-year-old son. I used to associate country music with rifles, pick-up trucks, and an incomplete set of teeth, but now that I'm a fan (with a beautiful set of crowned uppers), I discarded my stereotype just like an empty bottle of beer.

Cam became a fan at 14 when he went to a Kenny Chesney concert with his sister and heard "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." That was his epiphany, and he soon added Luke Bryan, Brad Paisley, and Willie Nelson to his list of favorites. "Everyone likes Willie Nelson," he told me. I asked him why he likes this music: "Country songs have a good message," he answered. "They all stand for something like relationships, the country, and trucks. They have meaning."

Well, trucks aren't meaningful to me, but they are to Cam, so he's listening to music that values what he values. And while I'm not sure I'll ever rate Loretta Lynn's "One's on the Way" the equal of a Sondheim lyric, there's something refreshing, basic, and honest about country tunes, especially in a recession.

JUNE WULFF

We didn't have Mr. Rogers in Canada, where I grew up; I learned about him only after I had kids. At first I found everything about him eye-rollingly dull - his gaudy patchwork window curtains, tedious operas, silly Henrietta Pussycat voice. Yet my daughter was mesmerized by him, and the day she spoke her first full sentence - "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, Daddy" - I had a definite change of heart. When I heard rumors that he was retiring, I went to Pittsburgh to interview him. I went to his office, took a walk with him, accompanied him to his chiropractor. What I found was a man who was at ease with himself in a way few people ever are. He died a year and a half later, and though I didn't know he was ill, I remember thinking at the time that this was a life well-lived. I loved the joy he took in playing Mr. Rogers's tunes on his piano. I loved his sense of loyalty, not only to his threadbare low-tech puppets but to colleagues he'd worked with for 34 years. I loved the pleasure he took in small things, like his blue Flair pen. I also appreciated the random pieces of wisdom he shared, including one nugget that puzzled me at the time but I am starting to now understand. "Something happens when I'm by myself and in the presence of silence," he said. "The older I get, the more I recognize the enormous value of silence."

LINDA MATCHAN

I'd forgotten all about Harry Nilsson. But when a 4-year-old is knee-deep into planetary exploration and can tell his Saturn V from his Redstone boosters, it's time to search the iTunes library for "Spaceman." It's a safe bet that Nilsson's 1972 song first captured my son's attention with its opening: "Bang, bang, shoot em' up, destiny/Bang, bang, shoot em' up to the moon/Bang, bang, shoot em' up one, two, three" followed by the punchy, soaring "One, two, three, four!" Then comes the desolate realization: "I wanted to be a spaceman/That's what I wanted to be/But now that I am a spaceman/Nobody cares about me." That angst is virgin territory for a preschooler (and sounds pretty funny delivered through Dylan's jubilant singing style), but it resonates on a different level for parents, and leads to a Harry Nilsson rediscovery mission. Some of our family favorites are "Me and My Arrow," "Everybody's Talkin' ," "Without You," "Coconut" and "Jump Into The Fire." But "Spaceman," especially, resonates for both its timeless fun and its 21st-century despair - "Now that I am a spaceman, I'd rather be back on the pad."

FIONA LUIS

I'm not much for movies, but I love the theater. A bad movie is just a bad movie, but inside a single scene a bad play can change into a good one, or a good one to a great one, and even when it's pretty much a stinker you can always find something interesting going on: a good performance, a well-written line, some bit of funny business in the background. The theater is cheaper in London, and when I lived there I went so indiscriminately I even saw an Andrew Lloyd Webber production. One of my favorite plays that year was "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)" - funny, loud, politically so wrong the troupe would spell it Inncoreckte - so when a company in Baltimore put on a production, I took my nephew Jake along for the ride. Think Warner Brothers jumps off the screen and onto a stage in front of you, and then imagine you're 7 years old and you get to climb into the cartoon. The high point for him was when Yorick's rubber skull bounced into his lap and he went up onstage to return it to the players. I can't say the experience turned him off movies or into an actor, but at 17, Jake still remembers it - and I still remember the way his face looked that afternoon.

LUCIA HUNTINGTON

In 1977, I was in exactly the wrong place to appreciate "Star Wars," George Lucas's sci-fi pop juggernaut: a 20-year-old cinema studies major who'd just discovered Werner Herzog and Jean-Pierre Melville and Stan Brakhage and who wouldn't dare stoop to enjoying a popcorn flick, even one this transformative. I and my snotty little friends looked right past "Star Wars" to its influences (1940s serials, Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress"), and we bemoaned how this one silly movie dumbed down both the film industry and the greater culture.

We were right, of course, but in our monastic certainty, our Godardian hair shirts, we missed why "Star Wars" went over so big: It's insanely enjoyable. I had to have children to figure that out. Specifically, I had to wait until the moment in 2002 that 5-year-old Natalie turned from the TV, halfway through the movie, and blurted in sugar-shock disbelief, "This is the best movie I've ever SEEN!" So I sat down and watched it with her, and through her, and I had to agree. In the depth of its imagined world and the shallow comic-book joys of its action, "Star Wars" was the best movie ever, as long as we were watching it and for a long time after.

Until Natalie saw "The Godfather" a few months ago, at least.

TY BURR

I have never been a fan of the musical. Nothing strikes me as sillier than a bunch of people dancing and singing to move the plot along. Then there's the singing itself - so technically perfect you can't imagine they actually feel anything, as lifeless as a Mariah Carey record. But having a journalist friend in New York who covers theater, and a child in Boston eager to go to New York, I needed to check my Alan Mencken aversion at the door. We went to see "Mary Poppins" on Broadway. An interesting thing happened as soon as the show began. I found myself sucked in. It felt big and important and exciting. Lila scarfed down a bag of peanut M & M's without looking down. She marveled at the governess taking flight.

No kidding aside, it was the same sort of revelatory experience I had when I went to see Wayne Newton, on a lark, at "Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede" a few years ago. You expect to snicker but, watching the admiration from the crowd and perfectly executed performance on stage, you ask yourself "What's wrong with pure joy?"

GEOFF EDGERS

It started with "Artemis Fowl": "It's great, and I bet you'll like it too." I did. Then on to "Sea of Trolls": "Mom, it's the best novel ever." OK, it's not "Pride and Prejudice," but it's definitely one of the best children's novels I've ever read - and I've read a lot in the past 11 years, because my son C.J. and I both love to read, and we especially love to read together.

So by the time he started nudging me to check out his manga collection, I knew enough to trust his taste. I also knew enough to ask him why he liked what he liked, because that's often even more interesting than the books themselves.

"I like reading right to left because it makes my brain work differently, and that's cool." True. "And it's kind of interesting that the characters say, 'Oh Buddha!' instead of 'Oh God!' - it makes me wonder what else I never noticed about growing up in the US that might be different growing up somewhere else." Also true, and gratifyingly observant. "And they have awesome fights."

OK, so on some points we will never see eye to eye.

But I do keep sneaking his "Naruto."

LOUISE KENNEDY