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Julia has autism, but she also has green eyes and red hair and an artistic temperament. They are defined by an array of human traits, which young viewers somehow recognize with heightened clarity when expressed by puppets. But episode by episode, he or she realizes that Big Bird’s defining characteristic may not, in fact, be his conspicuous height or the hue of his feathers, any more than Oscar can be judged solely by his taste in condominiums.
Julia it would be.Īt first all a toddler sees is a giant yellow bird and a grouch in a trash can. (Sesame viewed the choice as more counterintuitive.) Kimmelman suggested the name Julia (after her older daughter, who’d been such a support to Greg). Kimmelman was assigned to write a storybook featuring an autistic character.Īlthough boys with autism or autism spectrum disorders, collectively termed ASD, outnumber girls about 4.5 to one, it was decided, after much debate, that the Sesame character would be a girl. In 2010, Sesame began consulting with educators, psychologists and activists, and Sherrie Westin, Sesame Workshop’s executive vice president of global impact and philanthropy, decided to put resources into an autism initiative. How would it be possible to create a Sesame Street character that could bridge this span?ĭramatic change: Sherrie Westin (far left), Julia the Muppet, Leslie Kimmelman and Christine Ferraro It’s also a battleground, with self-advocates asserting they’re just differently abled, not disabled, and others crying out for supports to live the most basic life. The spectrum stretches from what, in the 1940s, Hans Asperger first dubbed his “little professors”-chatty but socially obtuse children, intensely focused on some narrow interest-to kids with no speech who are often self-injurious, caught in sensory tsunamis. But autism is a diverse and divided continent. “And then other kids could see them, too? Wouldn’t that be something?”Ĭurrently, one in every 68 children-and one in every 42 boys, or 2.9 percent of the male population-are on the autism spectrum. “Parents with kids on the spectrum, who knew how powerful the show’s effect was on our children.” Of course, they all thought about their kids someday seeing a reflection of themselves on the show. “There was a little cell of us,” she recalls. By age 5, he’d spent two Halloweens dressed like Elmo. A naturally musical child, he watched episodes with glee, singing the songs. “Mention Elmo, he’d turn to you,” she says. At 3, he seemed to connect deeply to Sesame characters. What was more, the characters that her colleagues crafted spoke powerfully to her son, Greg. There has been standout content on marriage and death, on the families of those in the military, on hunger in America and kids with incarcerated parents, and there was an HIV-positive Muppet on the South African series.īut one of the most groundbreaking innovations in its long history of wondrous storytelling began in the late 1990s, when Leslie Kimmelman, then an editor at Sesame Magazine, noticed that she had company at work: other folks who had kids with autism. “That’s one of the things that makes it so powerful.”įor years the show’s creators have been spicing up their alluring, hand-held curriculum of ABC’s and 1,2,3’s with lessons about life as it is.
“It’s not fantasy land, and it’s not a made-up, faraway place.” He pauses.
Dunn, who arrived to run Sesame Workshop as CEO in 2014. “Here, they created a street and a community that closely resembles what kids experience,” says Jeffrey D. Since its launch in 1969, the show has often been kids’ first step into the world beyond their living room rugs, the common cultural campfire for 95 percent of preschoolers-about 200 million Americans-who watched the show as children.Īnd it is a place-an ingenious staging of reality. Before we get to the matters at hand-including the ways in which we humans judge one another and an energetic puppet with autism named Julia-let’s consider the current value of a piece of imaginary real estate known as Sesame Street.