With Earth Day 2019 coming up on April 22 — and Earth Month running, well, all month! — a few familiar animated faces are celebrating and fighting to preserve our unique planet.
On PBS KIDS, viewers will be treated to a new primetime special: Cyberchase Space Waste Odyssey, premiering Friday, April 19 at 7 p.m. on the 24/7 channel. In the new special, Hacker (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) plots to takeover Cyberspace by positions giant patches of trash, unknowingly created by the citizens of Cyberspace, to converge on Motherboard’s Control Central. It’s up to the CyberSquad and their pal Digit (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried) to use their problem-solving skills and reports from citizen scientists to get to the bottom of the trash trouble before it’s too late.
In addition to the special, the Space Waste Odyssey video game will launch on the same day on the Cyberchase website and free on the PBS KIDS Games app. While traveling across cybersites and navigating through junk-storms to collect trash, players will learn how to dispose of waste by sorting it into containers for reuse, recycling, compost and landfill.
Another PBS KIDS series, Peg + Cat, has just been nominated for an Environmental Media Award in the Children’s Television category for its episode “The Compost Problem”. The animated adventure sees spirited Peg and her loyal sidekick Cat figure out the right mix of different types of compost to turn garbage into a garden. The show is co-created and exec produced by Jennifer Oxley (Little Bill, The Wonder Pets!) and Billy Aronson (Rent, Postcards from Buster) of 100 Chickens Prods. and produced by Fred Rogers Productions. Kevin Morrison of FRP and Vince Commisso of production partner 9 Story Media Group are also exec producers.
The EMAs honor film and TV productions that increase public awareness of environmental issues and inspire personal action. Also nominated in the Children’s Television category are Mission Force One “Sea Change”(Disney Junior) and Nickelodeon live-action series Cousins for Life “Hot Dog Day Afternoon”. Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (Fox Searchlight) is nominated with Aquaman (Warner Bros. ) in the Feature Film category.
And marking Earth Day on the playtime front, hit Nickelodeon International kids’ geography app Dora’s Worldwide Adventure is releasing an update on April 15 featuring eco-friendly tools like recycling bins and wind turbines. As the game was originally created to stoke kids’ curiosity, the update will include a new Earth Day button to educate kids about the holiday, in addition to interactive blooming flowers and watering cans available through July. Dora’s Worldwide Adventure is available in 100+ countries around the world in 14 languages, and features nine different countries with over 100 landmarks and items to explore.
