Forget Verdi, Try Carmen

By David E. Thigpen

What in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Answer: one of the hottest and most successful new tools in the childhood-learning market today. What began six years ago as a mystery-style computer program designed to coax youngsters into using reference books has blossomed into a public television game show, a best-selling set of computer video games, a series of adventure books and a collection of jigsaw puzzles, all popular with kids age eight and up. "It's addictive," says Jonathan Pray, 13, an eighth-grade student in Golden, Colo., who has been prodded by Carmen into memorizing all the world's countries and their capitals.

The notion behind the Carmen boom is no more complex than that old favorite, cops and robbers. Carmen is a glamorous ex-spy turned international thief, who leads a gang of wry rogues with names such as Clare d'Loon, Luke Warmwater and Justin Case. The light-fingered mob crisscrosses the globe and skips back and forth in history in search of national treasures to smuggle. Carmen may steal away to ancient China to purloin the Great Wall, hop ahead to medieval England to snitch the Magna Charta, or foray to present-day Uganda to abscond with a rare mountain gorilla.

The object is to find and capture Carmen or one of her gang and restore the stolen treasures. In the version that is airing on PBS, player-detectives decipher a series of verbal clues, then use their knowledge of geography to score points. The top scorer gets to chase Carmen around a large, unmarked map. In the computer version -- which is played with the help of books like a the World Almanac or an atlas -- competitors may be shown an image of Socrates and have to know when he lived in order to move to the next clue. Carmen's trail may lead a player from Kigali to Istanbul, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Cowboy Hall of Fame, or from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Mayan ruins. Some of the questions are far from easy: players may have to know the currency of a distant country, identify a South Pacific island tribe, or describe the significance of historical figures such as Frankish King Clovis I (A.D. 466-511) in order to nab the thief.

The Carmen phenomenon began in San Rafael, Calif., in the workshop of the Broderbund Software Co. The co-founder of Broderbund, Gary Carlston, had the original brainstorm; software writers then wove geographical and historical facts into the clues. The program eventually grew into five different Carmen titles, selling 2 million copies. In September Golden Books began publishing a line of adventure books, including Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? and Where in Europe Is Carmen Sandiego? This fall the half-hour Carmen TV series debuted nationally on PBS.

Educators around the country positively gush about the series. "I'm teaching a lot more geography and problem solving," says Jon Bennett, a fourth-grade teacher in Blusston, Ind., who uses the Carmen computer games in his class. "Kids have a reason for finding out where the Golden Gate Bridge is. They love Carmen, and they don't realize they're learning." But maybe, just maybe, they are.

With reporting by Lois Gilman/New York