ACHUKA Children's Books UK

children's & YA recommendations on the go

  • News
    • Reviews
  • Illustrated
    • Meet An Illustrator
  • Fiction
    • Humour
    • Classics/Reissues
    • YA
  • Non-Fiction
  • Poetry & Tales
  • Gift
  • Links
  • About
    • ACHUKAstudio
    • Contact me
You are here: Home / Archives for TV

Agitprop for toddlers: the oddly strident politics of CBeebies

January 25, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

Children’s shows now put environmentalism ahead of entertainment

Henry Jeffreys, writing in The Spectator

[you might also want to read this piece: Why do most children’s books have a liberal bias? also in The Spectator]

I think I might be a bad parent; whenever my wife is out, I plonk our two-year-old daughter in front of the television. The other day we watched a rainbow nation of children marching around the British countryside singing ‘Let’s make sure we recycle every day’, and I realised that something has changed in children’s programming since I was little. These young recyclers are from a show called Green Balloon Club, which is ostensibly a wildlife programme, but the song had more in common with one of those Dear Leader dirges you see in North Korea. It wasn’t education, it was propaganda.

The purpose of children’s stories has always been to educate as well as entertain. I was brought up on the Railway Stories by Revd W. Awdry, which later became the TV series Thomas the Tank Engine. These stories have a strict moral code: when an engine misbehaves he is chastised and often punished by the Fat Controller. In a story that terrified me as a child, my namesake Henry the Green Engine refused to leave a tunnel because he didn’t want the rain to mark his new paint job. To teach him a lesson, the Fat Controller had him bricked up in the tunnel.  The lesson was clear — don’t be vain about your shiny new paint job.

Compare this with a programme on CBeebies (the channel of choice for my daughter) called Mike the Knight. Mike is a knight in training and each episode consists of a ho-hum quest such as stopping the local Vikings stealing pies. He’s not a very like-able figure, Mike, arrogant and stupid, just the sort of character who might benefit from a bit of bricking up in a tunnel. Through over-confidence he initially fails in his quest and becomes disheartened. Rather than tell him where he’s going wrong, his companions — a couple of camp dragons and his sister — bolster his confidence and eventually, with a bit of luck and a lot of help from his friends, the quest is completed successfully. Everyone then tells Mike that he ‘has saved the day’.

via Agitprop for toddlers: the oddly strident politics of CBeebies » The Spectator.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: agenda, books, conservatism, education, leftist, liberalism, messages, politics, propaganda, reading, TV

First children’s TV series from Random House

October 4, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

Channel 5 has commissioned the first children’s TV series from Random House Children’s Screen Entertainment (RHCSE), the UK production house created by Random House Children’s Publishing and Komixx Entertainment.
"Wanda and the Alien" is based on the series of books by writer and illustrator Sue Hendra in which a little girl rabbit befriends an alien. It is set to air in 2014 as a series of 52 10-minute programmes using flash animation. The series is already in pre-production at Mackinnon & Saunders digital studios in Manchester.
RCHSE has appointed kids’ content distributor CAKE to handle global distribution of the series.

via First children's TV series from Random House | The Bookseller.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: CAKE, entertainment, Kommix, Random House, series, TV

Andy Griffiths TV cartoon to premiere tomorrow

September 20, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

bookseller

A TV cartoon based on Andy Griffiths’ The Day My Bum Went Psycho (Pan) will premiere in Australia tomorrow.
The 80-episode series called The Day My Butt Went Psycho will screen its first episode at 8am on Saturday 21 September on the GO! channel. The series is co-produced by Australian production company Studio Moshi and Canadian company Nelvana, in association with Scholastic USA.

via Andy Griffiths TV cartoon to premiere tomorrow.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: adaptation, Australia, cartoon, TV

Hit children’s book Topsy and Tim turned into CBeebies’ first ever live drama – Mirror Online

June 14, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

topsytim

The adventures of a twin boy and girl that have sold 21 million children’s books over the past 53 years are to be turned into a TV series.

But BBC producers have had to plump for two unrelated lookalikes to play Topsy and Tim after failing to find a suitable set of siblings.

Jocelyn Macnab and Joshua Lester, both seven, will fill the roles of the five-year-olds in the 60-part show.

It will be the first live drama to air on CBeebies.

Author Jean Adamson said she was, “tickled pink that Topsy and Tim are still relevant to today’s audiences”.

via Hit children’s book Topsy and Tim turned into CBeebies’ first ever live drama – Mirror Online.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: Adamson, BBC, dramatisation, series, television, Tim, Topsy, TV

Walliams book adapted for TV show

April 27, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

David Walliams’s best-selling childrens book Gangsta Granny is to be brought to life as a Christmas family drama for the BBC. The tale follows last year’s seasonal special when another of his novels, Mr Stink, was adapted starring Hugh Bonneville as a kindly tramp. Walliams will work on the script along with Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley who have previously worked on Gnomeo and Juliet and Robbie The Reindeer. The hour-long BBC1 film, which has yet to be cast, revolves around schoolboy Ben who is bored at his grandmother’s house until he learns she was formerly an international jewel thief and has been plotting to steal the crown jewels.The story was first published in 2011…

via Walliams book adapted for TV show – BelfastTelegraph.co.uk.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Children Tagged With: adaptation, Christmas, drama, dramatisation, TV

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Copyright ACHUKA © 2022 · designed on Genesis Framework

 

Loading Comments...