The greatness of such characters as Oscar or Grover was that they could appeal to children without needing to be cutesy. Unfortunately, and there always seems to be an unfortunately these days when it comes to children's television, a certain adherence to marketing over education crept in over recent years. Those consultations with child psychologists done by the Children's Television Workshop really paid off. Even today, if you see the sequences with such annoying characters as Elmo, it is the children or the child-like characters who deliver all the answer lines. Instead, they told the monster, other puppet, or child characters a few useful tidbits and let these characters work things out for themselves. They never acted as if they had every answer. Hooper, the adults were never condescending or smug. During every episode I saw, even Goodbye, Mr. Kudos are also due the adult cast of the show. Negative feelings are difficult enough for a child to understand, so having puppets to thoroughly explain them was very educational. More "cute" monsters such as Grover were used to show things like fear or sadness. They had a grouchy monster to show the effects of an anti-social mentality. They had a cookie monster to show what a negative (but highly funny, the way they presented it) appearance gluttony can bring. Other brilliant aspects of the show included using monsters to portray certain feelings or behaviours that the audience might be conflicted about. Hooper was one of the most amazing episodes of children's television ever broadcast because it made an effort to try and teach children about something so difficult that even live adults are often no help with it. By contrast, the Sesame Street I remember even dealt with such issues as the death of a loved one. That such "lessons" were allowed to be broadcast shows how useful the regulators of television really are. As if that wasn't harmful enough, Barney would openly tell children they weren't good if they didn't have good feelings, or alter the rules of a game to make someone else the winner. Even when that support cast consisted of four year olds and fourteen year olds. In the 1990s, Sesame Street had a rather nasty competitor in the shape of Barney, a purple dinosaur with a support cast that showed no difference in emotional response. Unfortunately, Sesame Street is going much in the same direction. From what I've seen from observing some of my cousins' children, it hasn't changed a lot except parents have revised their opinion of its suitability for five year olds. Play School, being the other one, basically got me shouting at the television that I was not retarded, not stupid, and not a diminished human being, just a child. Mother Mother I Feel Sick Send For the Doctor Quic.When I was a child, there were two main educational programs shown to children.Great Monday Give: Country Bunny, again.Goat, Charles Clement & the Wonderful Art of I. So for this, what is for me, the rainy last day of school before the holidays really begin, please enjoy a little bit of rarely seen Sendak and hope that someone comes to their senses and gets this little bugger back into print. I'd only heard of this title before so it came as a delightful surprise when the boy and I stumbled in off the street into a bookshop to escape the pouring rain and there it was, all wonderful and perfect staring back at me from the shelf. All I know is that from a book lover's point of view it makes no sense, as this followup up to what the Wild Things seem to be doing now is wicked and wonderful and worth getting a second look at. Perhaps Sendak himself is keeping it out of print, who knows. I'm often shocked to find wonderful books by famous authors out-of-print, but seeing as this one is so closely related to a famous book ( Where the Wild Things Are) it is even more shocking.
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