The term kids’ entertainment too often brings to mind cartoon merchandising, patronizing educational TV shows, or theme-park chorus lines with furry animal costumes. And that’s why the Vancouver International Children’s Festival—which will celebrate its 40th birthday when it runs from Monday (May 29) to June 4 on Granville Island—may be as special for what it’s not offering kids as much as for what it is.

“We believe that kids deserve great art in their lives; our role is really to provide great art for babies up to 13-year-olds,” says artistic and executive director Katharine Carol, speaking to the Straight over the phone in the runup to the festival. “It’s to provide them with great performances they can watch and engage in, but also to engage in art-making opportunities.”

One of the many wonders Carol has witnessed over her time at the fest is the ever-expanding richness of those stage shows for babies and toddlers—a trend reflected in the ever-younger audience members turning out to the fest, with the three-to-seven-year-old bracket now making up half. Carol says the trend started more than 10 years ago in Europe, and such work is now evolving and diversifying around the globe.

“I started bringing it about five or six years ago here,” Carol says. “Artists were recognizing parents wanted to do something with their under-twos where if they cry or they’re moving around, it’s okay.

“What sometimes has happened with work for children in the past is that children have been treated as though they can’t quite grasp it or won’t understand,” Carol adds. “But over the past 10 or 20 years, artists have realized that’s ridiculous. There’s been a lot of explaining for children on television. Artists today that produce beautiful work for kids, they treat them in the same way they did for older adults.”

That’s meant shows like 2011’s Farfalle, a magical multimedia work in which toddlers walked on-stage amid glowing garden forms and projections, or Shona Reppe’s gloriously low-tech, veggie-and-fruit laden Potato Needs a Bath from Scotland in 2015.

This year, the approach means everyone from babies to three-year-olds can see Pulse, a music-and-movement show by Mexico’s kid-savvy Teatro al Vacio. “There’s basically no language in the show, and they’re moving wooden blocks around the space,” Carol explains. “They make things and climb on things they’ve built and then invite babies into the space.”

Elsewhere, kids about three to seven years old will love Grug and the Rainbow, a puppet show with a whimsical mossy set from the land Down Under—where, according to the well-travelled Carol, they’re old pros at artful stage shows for the small set.

In the same fantastical realm, look for A Heart in Winter (Le Coeur en Hiver), Théâtre de l’Oeil’s visually fantastical reinterpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Snow Queen. “It has a massive set with a rotating stage, actors, and puppets,” Carol enthuses of the production aimed at kids five and up.

Part of the key to bringing in this topflight kids’ theatre from around the world is having proper venues like Performance Works, the Waterfront, and the Revue Stage, which the kids’ fest has been using on Granville Island since moving there from Vanier Park in 2011. The location meets the technical needs of shows that just can’t be performed in a tent—and that just wouldn’t be travelling here, period, without the kids’ fest.

“Last year at the festival we felt, through our feedback, as though the audience we have now has really embraced Granville Island, and that we had a huge new audience,” Carol says. “I think we’ve made it over the hump from moving from Vanier Park to Granville Island.”

In other words, most families will know exactly where to find the fest next week—and will know just how the folks there define “kids’ entertainment”.