Max with Daniel Tiger on “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.” (Fred Rogers Productions)
An upcoming episode of a popular PBS Kids show will be told from the viewpoint of a character with autism.
“Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” will premiere an episode this week with a story from Max, a recurring character on the show, which is a spin-off of the venerable “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
In the episode, Max, who has autism, learns that people can be more than one thing by finding out the Mr. McFeely, the mail carrier, is also a volunteer story-time reader at the library.
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The story from Max’s perspective is part of a new format for “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” according to Chris Loggins, the show’s supervising producer.
“In our new season, we have started to feature characters other than Daniel Tiger as lead characters in their own stories,” Loggins said. “We hope that through this episode viewers will learn that everyone is more than one thing. There are so many things that make us all who we are.”
To ensure accuracy, the team behind “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” brought on Ava X. Rigelhaupt as a co-writer of the story. Rigelhaupt, who is on the spectrum, is a writer on the PBS Kids show “Carl the Collector,” which is about a raccoon with autism and his friends. In addition, Wes Dotson, a behavior analyst, served as an advisor for the episode.
The episode featuring Max’s story will air Tuesday on PBS Kids and will be available for streaming beginning that same day.
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