For those Bourbon St. bound this month, pages 12-14 offer a wrap of some of the new projects Canadian companies will be shopping at NATPE in New Orleans Jan. 25 to 28.

Versions of these stories also appear in the Winter 1999 issue Playback International.

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At natpe, Portfolio will flag its new holiday special Something From Nothing, based on the children’s book by Phoebe Gilman in which a mouse and human family inhabit the same ramshackle house in Russia.

The half-hour program, animated by Ottawa, Ont.-based Funbag Animation, is in production for delivery early next year and will air on all-animation station Teletoon in Canada.

At natpe, Portfolio is looking to place Toronto-based S&S Productions’ properties, which include the comic series History Bites and talk show Go Girl!

Portfolio’s international distribution arm is representing u.s. producer Champion Entertainment’s So You Want to Be?, a 26-episode, career-oriented series for youths in which various professionals are visited in their workplace. Portfolio has presold the program to Encore Media Group in the u.s., sabc in South Africa, and Discovery Kids in Latin America and Asia.

Portfolio is repping two other u.s. series, both distributed by Western International Syndication.

The programs are Pug and Zero, a 26 half-hour edutainment series in which a 12-year-old inventor discovers how to travel between the Quantum Fields and takes part in numerous adventures, and Field Trip.

Portfolio has also secured international distribution rights to Champion Media’s Adventures With Kanga Roddy, produced by martial arts expert Anthony Chang and football stars Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott.

In the program, Kanga Roddy, a seven-foot kangaroo and martial arts expert, teaches kids to solve dilemmas of respect, honesty, trust and commitment. The first 13 half-hour episodes of the edutainment kids’ series is airing on pbs, and by March 1999, 39 half-hours will be complete.

The series has been presold to Discovery Kids for Latin America and Asia and a second season is in the works.