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How are parenting and launching a kids’ TV show similar? “Anyone can do it, so long as you’re willing to sacrifice sleeping and eating and run up huge amounts of debt.” Jacqueline Moody, co-creator and headwriter of WordWorld on PBS Kids, talks about her work and how her 3-year-old son inspires her.
How did you conceive of WordWorld?
It was the brainchild of my cousin, Don Moody. His wife was pregnant with their first child, and Don began to seriously consider what being a parent meant, and came to the conclusion that parenting meant citizenship. He didn’t just want to be a “provider”; he wanted his children to be proud of what he did for a living. He thus decided he wanted to go into children’s educational television, specifically animation. He had been studying print on screen in all formats and media, curious about what were the best methods to excite children about learning to read. One day he saw the word “shark” onscreen and thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if that turned into a shark and swam off screen?” And that’s how the idea for WordWorld was born.
How difficult is it to launch a children’s TV show?
It’s the easiest thing in the world. Anyone can do it, so long as you’re willing to sacrifice sleeping and eating and run up huge amounts of debt. Like parenting!
How do you come up with story ideas?
Lately a lot of ideas have been generated in my 3-year-old son Jackson’s bedroom. I try to make up a story to tell him every night, and on many nights he asks me to tell him a WordWorld story about “Bear and Dog” or “Sheep and Pig” or some such combination of WordFriends. So many basic story ideas begin there, with me telling him a short story about some of the WordFriends. I keep a list of these ideas, and then bring them into writers meetings to work through them. Most writers are closet stand-up comedians, so the meetings produce a lot of laughs as well as solid episode premises.
Can you give us an idea of how an episode is produced?
We usually go through about three drafts of each script, with our director Olexa Hewryk, story director Robert Vargas, Don Moody and our educational advisors weighing in every step of the way. We read the script aloud after each draft, which is usually lots of fun and reminds us why we’re not actors.
The storyboard artist then goes off and sketches out the episode in a kind of comic book form, adding his/her own humor and character emotion along the way. Then we record the script with the actors, and lay their voices out over the storyboards. This is called an “animatic,” and this is what we take into preschools to test with 3- to 5-year-olds. Sometimes we need to make changes to the episodes based on the animatic’s appeal and comprehension among the preschoolers.
When all that is said and done, we ship the episode off to our animation studio, where words truly do “come alive,” thanks to the animation artists. They add their own flavor and interpretation to each episode. So although an episode might start out as a nice, quiet bedtime moment between a mom and her son (which is, of course, my favorite part of the process), it becomes a great collaborative effort overall, with lots of very talented minds leaving their stamp on the story.
Does Jackson ever give you suggestions or criticisms? And do you ever follow them?
Jackson is a big fan of WordWorld. I am amazed at how the show has turned his mind onto words. He is constantly asking what letters are in words and the sounds they make. Although some of this is just a by-product of his age, I can actually see exact places in his brain where the show is at work. For instance, recently he watched the episode “Sh-Sh-Shark!,” which exposes kids to the concept that the letters S and H combine to make the “sh” sound. Later that night he and I were playing cards, and the words “Go Fish” were on the box of cards. He pointed to the S and H on the box and said, “You know, Mommy, s and h make the ‘sh’ sound.” So that enabled him to sound out the word “Fish.” I was astounded.
And the knowledge stayed with him. A few days later, as he flushed the toilet after he had gone “potty,” he wanted to know how to spell the word “flush.” He figured out the F and the L by sounding it out, I helped him with the U, and then he remembered the letters that make the “sh” sound at the end. Now if I could only get him to wash his hands after he flushes…
Jackson also tests out all our web games before they make it to pbskids.org. He calls it his “job.” He thinks watching the words he builds on the site turn into WordThings is “cool!”
What’s one thing fans of the show would be surprised to learn?
How hard it is to tell a good story with kid-friendly characterization while maintaining the integrity of the curriculum…oh, and making it funny.
