Tired of kid's movies

The beginning of summer frustrates me. Aside from a few highly publicized action blockbusters, all the new stuff is kid's movies. How many cartoons/movies based on kid's books can you really watch?

Quite a lot, personally. Also, I only count 2 animated films in theaters right now and only 2 more due this summer =\ I do agree that there are too many, that companies are only making them to cash in on the buzz made from Pixar films and Shrek (which is why they're all 3D animated), but I'd say last summer was more engorged with useless animation than this one.
For non-animated, I assume you're referring to Nancy Drew? Other than that I don't consider Pirates to be a children's movie, though, maybe that's me

P.S. None of the current or upcoming animated films are based on children's books <!--s51-->:3<!--/s51--> All original, which is interesting.

I love the kids movies that have come out the last few years. Ones like Shrek, Cars and Monsters Inc. just to name a few. I am glad since that is what I end up taking the boys to see.

I'm sick of all the kid movies about penguins! There are too many of them! Pick a new animal!

Yeah, call me crazy, but it seems like there's a trend of 3d movies involving things that don't normally talk...talking. Cars, robots, just about any animal you can name, etc. etc.

I would agree that the penguins seem to be the hot thing right now. I never really thought about it but you're right they like to take things that don't normally talk and make them talk. I guess that is why they are kids movies, I guess.

That's typically the plot of any animated movie/TV show and has been since animation began. Reasons being:
A) you can film a human doing something, acting, but you can't make animals or inanimate objects do it. Animation opens up a door that allows you to do anything your imagination can think of and using humans is just so...boring. Also, it's easier to stretch reality when you use creatures no one has seen in real life, like talking anthropomorphic bunnies
B) In some, and almost all recent cases, animals and funny talking toasters appeal to children a lot more than humans do. They're cute and funny. This wasn't always the case, though, because animation was originally intended for adults (Looney Tunes especially). I also think kids are less likely to imitate what cartoon animals do than what cartoon (or live action) people do. As a kid, I never lept off cliffs or hit my siblings with frying pans, but we did imitate the Power Rangers.
C) Cartoon animals allow for the audience to easily project themselves onto the character without regard for factors like gender or race. It allows people to more easily identify and thus care about characters. It's not racist, mind, humans just naturally look to people who are most like them and, especially children, they will identify with those who look most like them because they represent their potential in the world. Take away the physical element, people will look to personality and situation to find who they identify with most.
and D) Humans are just damn hard to draw. We know what humans look like so we can see flaws and impossibilities in their cartoon representations. Animals are easier to draw and easier to exaggerate if you can't draw them close to what they're supposed to look like (Taz looks nothing like an actual Tasmanian Devil). There's also a bit of disturbing factored in, especially with 3D animation, that prevents humans from being realistically animated. It's creepy, they 'it's so human yet not' is just naturally disturbing (there was this whole theorem that backs this up but I can't remember the name of it) that it would put off people watching it. That happened somewhat with Cars, there were no humans in it but because people understand cars as what people drive, it turned a lot of people off by how creepy it was that the cars were moving on their own. The cars were realistic and thus made it strange that there were no people around (people didn't have problems with the Chevron cars in those old commercials). So humans in the same situation would creep people out and they wouldn't see it. So humans would typically have to be stylized to prevent that (kind of like The Incredibles). But all of that can be avoided by animating animals or lamps or whatever.

EDIT: On penguins, well, penguins are cute so people have sort of clung to them because they get a reaction out of people. It's like...when Survivor hit TV, being one of (but not the) first reality shows and people clung to it because it was new. And now studios are cranking out endless reality shows to get the same response. Just wait, someone will make a good animated movie about koalas and people will be all over that. OR if some big news story on some other animal, like pandas or something, gets a big reaction out of the public, there will then be tons of movies about pandas.