Happy Birthday, Jim Henson!

Katie Gill

Cataloging Librarian

This post originally broadcast on MLC Moments on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to get things started on MLC Moments tonight! One of Mississippi’s most famous entertainers has had a long relationship with the written word. From Sesame Street to Scrooge, we’re going to take a brief look at how Jim Henson and the Muppets influenced the wide world of literature. 

On September 24, 1936, Jim Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi. He spent his childhood in Greenville and nearby Leland before his family moved to Maryland. Henson was a voracious reader as a child, often pouring over The Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum and reprints of the comic strip Pogo by Walt Kelly. As a freshman in college, Henson created Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for a local Washington DC channel. The characters on Sam and Friends were precursors to Henson’s most famous creations, the Muppets. Including icons like Big Bird and Kermit the Frog, the Muppets have set their mark on pop culture ever since their inception.

In 1969, Henson and his crew were tapped to work full time on Sesame Street, a children’s educational program for public television. For the one person listening who doesn’t know what the show is, Sesame Street blends Muppets, human performers, and a child actor cast to learn about basic math and letters as well as more abstract concepts like life changes. Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones quotes Henson as saying, “Kids love to learn and the learning should be exciting and fun. That’s what we’re out to do.” Audiences certainly thought the show was exciting and fun: in 1970, Sesame Street was broadcast in fifty countries and seen by over seven million Americans each day.

Sesame Street was one of the first children’s shows to use a comprehensive educational curriculum, focused on educational goals. Repetition was often used to help young children practice and to make a connection between new and unfamiliar concepts. As children tend to imitate what they see, the show promoted modelling behaviors: if all the characters were inquisitive and loved to learn, hopefully that would inspire children to feel the same. Likewise, the show made itself interesting for parents as well as children thanks to celebrity guest stars and pop culture parodies.

And with Sesame Street came Sesame Street spin-offs. The show’s merchandising effort included tie-in toys, programs, and, obviously, books. Some of those books have become as classic as the show itself. The Monster At the End of the Book is written by Jon Stone and illustrated by Mike Smollin. Starring lovable, furry old Grover, Grover is surprised and scared to learn about the monster! He tries to prevent the reader from turning the pages only to discover that HE is the monster himself. The book has continuously been in print ever since it’s 1971 publication and, in 2012, was ranked number ten on the top 100 picture books in a survey published by School Library Journal.

Sesame Street wasn’t the only property that Henson created with a literary twist. The Muppet Show featured an episode starring Brooke Shields that was a full pastiche of the story Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. In 1987, Henson created and produced The Storyteller, a television show released on NBC and later HBO. The Storyteller retold folk stories and fairy tales, which were performed by a cast of human and Muppet performers. The show specifically focused on more obscure European fairy tales, choosing lesser known stories such as “The Six Swans” or “Hans My Hedgehog.” A spinoff series, The Storyteller: Greek Myths, focused on just what the title says. Though only thirteen episodes were made, The Storyteller was a critical success, winning the 1987 Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Program

Jim Henson died on May 16, 1990 at the age of 53 due to a bacterial infection. Even after Henson’s death, the Muppets still promote literacy and help encourage people to read. Sesame Street is still running and entertaining children to this day. Millennials like myself probably have nostalgic attachment to two literary Muppet films: A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. Both films retold two literary classics, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, infusing them with trademark Muppet humor and a lot of goofiness while still faithfully retaining the nature of the original text.

To learn more about Jim Henson, his life, and his works, we recommend checking out Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones, available at your local public library.