iCarly: Season 1, Vol. 1

Anyone watching pre-teen sensation Miranda Cosgrove in her supporting role on Drake & Josh can see she could easily front her own show. Nickelodeon wisely gave her one, and her easy charisma is on ample display in iCarly, a sitcom that finds Cosgrove as the star of her own popular video Web site, which of course leads to trouble in her off-Web life. Happily, the show doesn’t talk down to kids or clutter the plots with absurdities. But what elevates this show is its use of footage sent in by viewers—via the real iCarly.com site—which is then incorporated into the scripted show. The light, tight episodes are suitable for ages 8 to 14, and if our 10-year-old male assistant reviewer is any indication, the episodes have an extremely high repeatability factor. “It hasn’t jumped the shark,” he reports, and he’s right.

Shelf Talk: Get ready for iCarly mania; the merchandising has begun. An iCarly CD with all-star guests (Natasha Bedingfield, Avril Lavigne, Sean Kingston, among others) dropped in June. In July, a line of licensed products, from apparel to stationary to electronics, rolled out to the nation’s Limited Too/Justice stores. Imation will release this fall a line of iCarly-themed electronic products to Toys 'R’ Us. And some 90,000 kids have posted their own videos on iCarly.com, which is just a fraction of those watching at home.