Getting All Stinky & Dirty

I thought the highlight of August was going to be the paperback release of The Gift of Failure on August 23, or maybe my trip to Arkansas to visit my sister and her family in their new home. The whipped cream on the top of the Arkansas trip is that my sister is an incredibly talented stylist and master colorist at Wella, and the chick does good hair. I just sit down and let her do whatever the heck she wants with me because, as I may have mentioned, she's an incredibly talented stylist and master colorist at Wella. 

But then, THEN, this announcement landed in my inbox:

I have been working on this show for a little over a year, and I love it. I was skeptical when Alice Wilder, Producer of Blue's Clues, approached me because, you know, what kid needs more screen time? However, Alice is super-smart and terribly charming, and then she double-teamed me with Tara Sorensen, the equally smart and grotesquely charming Head of Kids Programming at Amazon Studios. The Stinky & Dirty Show is about solving problems, collaborating with others, asking "What If?" and persevering through failures, they said. Aw, hell. They used the f-word. 

Funny story: the show is based on the I Stink! books by Jim and Kate McMullan, and the first book in that series was one of two books (Where the Wild Things Are was the other) that scared the bejeezus out of Finnegan. I think the idea that the dump truck had a mouth, and might just eat him, freaked him out. 

I'm happy to report that no one gets eaten in The Stinky & Dirty Show.

My favorite part of each episode comes at the end, when Stinky and Dirty offer a "view & do" (yep, I learned some official TV lingo!), an invitation for kids to take the skills and ideas they've learned during the episode (the use of levers or ramps, for example), and encourage them to go out into the world and create their own to real-world solutions.

I'm just happy I got to be a part of it. Thank you, Alice and Tara.