The picture of a sunny day.

Hey I just met you

And this is crazy

But you have COOKIE

So share it maybe!

afrotitty:

crankyskirt:

The familiar address of Sesame Street is about to get a new visitor, one who could surely benefit from the sunny days and friendly neighbors there. For a prime-time special to raise awareness about hunger faced by American families, Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization that produces “Sesame Street,” has created a new Muppet character named Lily, a 7-year-old girl representing one of the 17 million American children that the Department of Agriculture estimates are “food insecure,” meaning their access to food is limited or uncertain.

“We thought long and hard about how do we really represent this from a child’s point of view?” Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop’s senior vice president for outreach and educational practices, said on Monday morning in a telephone interview. “We felt it was best to have this new Muppet take this on in a positive way and a healthy way.”

Ms. Betancourt said that she and her colleagues spent time considering all the elements of Lily’s character that would make her realistic but empathetic to young viewers: her style of dress, her voice performance and even mannerisms, like her tendency to look down at her feet rather than make eye contact when she is speaking to other characters.

“She wants to talk about this topic,” she said, “because she knows it will help many other families and children, but it isn’t an easy topic to talk about in the first place.” Still, the tone of the special, called “Growing Hope Against Hunger,” is meant to be hopeful as Lily visits a community garden and encounters popular Muppets like Elmo, Rosita, Bert and Grover as well as the celebrity guests Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams Paisley.

For now, Ms. Betancourt said, the Lily character is planned only for the special, which will make its debut on Sunday on PBS. Previous “Sesame Street” specials have addressed subjects like economic insecurity and children with parents in the military.

I love Sesame Street for this. When I think of the work that they do to make difficult subjects accessible to very young children, not just in the US incarnation but internationally, I’m blown away by how well they do. (Trying to think of a time when their programming has shown itself to be tone-deaf in some way, and can’t think of it. Even if that’s the case, for a program that’s been airing for over 40 years, there have been way more hits than misses.)

I don’t have little kids to watch this with, but I’ll be watching when this special airs.

Sesame Street is pretty solid. I appreciate this.

(via sophisticunty)