Top 8 Quotes by Joan Ganz Cooney

I thought it was quintessentially American - very hip, very late-'60s. I was absolutely stunned when a German production company asked me if I could do a 'Sesame Street' in Germany. It was absolutely the happiest surprise.

I did not even go to kindergarten; I just started first grade when I was five and started reading right away. I don't know how it all worked, but I had a lot of adults and older siblings around me. So, I guess I was probably introduced to what one would be introduced to at that time in kindergarten.

My degree was in education, but the idea of being a teacher lost out to being a reporter. I worked at a newspaper for a while, then went to New York and worked in PR at RCA and NBC, and at 'The United States Steel Hour,' a drama series.

I was a TV producer at a noncommercial station, and we were producing some good documentaries - on Head Start, on poverty. But I was struck by the children, and the damage that poverty was doing to them. I didn't think filming them was helping much, so I wondered how we could use TV for them, to teach them.

In South Africa, where HIV-positive children are often shunned, we have an HIV-positive Muppet to teach children to be friendly with children with HIV. But they use local actors. And it's not always a street. Sometimes it's 'Sesame Plaza,' or 'Sesame Tree.'