Arthur turns thirty

Daughter Number Three reminds us that today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the premiere of the PBS kids’ show Arthur.

When our son Ben worked at GBH, he did a series of YouTube videos with items from the station’s archives. So of course he did an (unembeddable) episode about Arthur, featuring an archival interview with Arthur’s creator Marc Brown. If you watch, you’ll get to see a yearbook photograph of the teacher who inspired Mr. Ratburn.

My favorite Arthur episode: the one in which Miss Sweetwater subs for Mr. Ratburn and the kids get sick of being babied.

[N.B.: Ben has since lost the beard.]