I consider myself a book-lover, frugal, and responsible about other people’s property.
Thus it may surprise you that, upon finding and reading a book in the church nursery, I ripped it up. By hand. Into tiny little pieces. I told the nursery director later that I didn’t even want someone to pull it out of the recycling and read it.
Perhaps even more surprising is that it was a Sesame Street book. More surprising yet, I set out to review the movie the book was based on, and ending up thinking that it wasn’t that bad, actually enjoyable, with a few caveats for foster and adoptive parents.
That was several years ago. When I saw that Follow that Bird was being released on DVD, I groaned, found a library copy, and prepared to write a scathing review.
The plot which so horrified me was this: a social worker says it is terrible that Big Bird lives all alone, and he must go live with an adoptive bird family—appropriately named the Dodos—because “birds belong with their own kind”.
Big Bird runs away from his shallow adoptive family, heading out for Sesame Street. His Sesame Street friends learn of this and set out to meet him and help him get home.
The resolution, thatfriends can become family, is unobjectionable. Friends can become like family.
The part which horrified me, of course, was the idea of children thinking that social workers are meddlers who take children away from their loved ones. (That adoptive families were portrayed as dodos didn’t impress me either, but that was a secondary concern from me compared to the idea of adoption and social workers not forming families, but breaking them up.)
Surprisingly, I found the movie much more to my liking than the book. The social worker scenes still made my blood boil, but Big Bird’s Sesame Street friends ask him if he wants to go, and says he doesn’t have to go with the social worker. At least the show the Sesame Street family doesn’t just let him be taken off.
Head full of the social worker’s descriptions of a birdhouse in the country with a mother and father bird and a sister and brother bird, Big Bird imagines picnics and baseball games with a family of birds. He imagines a mother bird kissing him good-night. He says he wants to go.
A feature-length production allows for comedic and musical elements and subplots, which take the focus off the adoption theme for much of the movie. Big Bird’s friends learn that he has run away, and four groups set out to find him, following different routes to Illinois in hope of intercepting Big Bird.
Naturally, many laughs occur as Oscar drives the Sloppy Jalopy and forces Maria and Telly to endure a “Tossed Salad” at the Grouch Café, as Cookie Monster begins the journey by eating the car’s hubcaps, and as Bert endures a plane ride with Ernie as pilot. (SuperGrover also attempts to fly to the rescue.)
A trucker shares an inspirational song about persistence, and there is a lovely lullaby sung by Olivia, Big Bird and Snuffy simultaneously, after each wonders what the others are doing that night.
The part my daughter found scary to watch was when the bumbling operators of a traveling carnival kidnap Big Bird and force him to sing for an audience. Naturally, some kids help the Sesame Street gang locate Big Bird, and he is rescued.
The social worker catches up just as the rescuers and Big Bird arrive home on Sesame Street. She says she’s found another lovely bird family. Big Bird says the Sesame Street people are his family. When the old “belonging with your own kind” line comes out, Maria points out that Sesame Street has all kinds: humans, monsters, honkers, dogs. The social worker reflects that they do seem happy together, and their rescue efforts show they love Big Bird. She announces that she will “place” Big Bird at Sesame Street, and proclaims “another successful placement by the Feathered Friends Society!”
Adoptive and foster parents will want to watch with their children and point out the differences—in the real world kids can’t make choices like Big Bird does, but workers and families try hard to understand kids’ needs, and placements aren’t as arbitrary as a single meeting.
Since my girls are older, I let them watch the DVD with me. They thought it was a good movie. I asked them if they thought it would be scary for, say, four-and-five-year-olds.
“Yes,” said my six-and-a-half-year-old. “Because the bad guy takes money and Big Bird has to get out of the cage on the truck.”
“Do you think,” I persisted, “that some kids will think all adoptive parents are like the Dodos, or that they will be scared a social worker will suddenly decide to take them to another home?”
“I think they will know it’s a Big Bird and not a real kid,” she informed me.
As reporter Kermit D. Frog would say,
“And there you have it.”
Please see these related blogs:
Sesame Street Lends a Hand to Cash-Strapped Parents
Sesame Street Helps Parents Teach about Emergencies