The formula was simple: Merge bubblegum and soul with the crackling sincerity of an enthusiastic child, cross your fingers, and pray for airplay.

Throw in a publicist, stylists, dance instructors, and a hot-shot songwriting team and the next thing you know you've got a Neverlander dangling a small child out a window in Bahrain.

That's provided you're a one-in-several-billion Gary, Indiana, Jackson. For our Home Schooled performers and their overly ambitious adult promoters, the path to kid soul stardom wasn't anywhere near as "simple as do-re-mi." Home Schooled: The ABCs Of Kid Soul unfolds like a map of American dreams derailed early.

More energetic than funky, more passionate than soulful, whether fastidiously trained or shockingly green, these kid performers laid down nothing less than absolute honesty.