The Letter People


The Letter People is a children's literacy program and the television series based on said program. The term also refers to the various characters depicted in the program and television show.

Original program

Elayne Reiss-Weimann and Rita Friedman created the concept of Letter People as teachers in Nanuet, New York. In 1964, first-grade teacher Reiss-Weimann formed the original idea for the Letter People. She had struggled daily to draw attention of her 24 students in a distraction-fond hallway classroom at the overcrowded school. Weimann collaborated with an early childhood coordinator, Rita Friedman, to create an educational program that revolved around 26 anthropomorphic characters, each representing a letter of the alphabet, to teach beginning readers how to "decode" or "sound out" the consonants and vowels that form words. They embodied the basic rules of phonics into stories about these make-believe characters called Letter People.
Each letter of the alphabet had a distinct characteristic to help children learn not only the letter but the sound the letter represents in the written word. For example, Mr. M has a Munching Mouth, Mr. N has a Noisy Nose, or Mr. T has Tall Teeth. The characters were painted on large, two-dimensional portrait cards. Each character was given an engaging personality to help the teacher bring her or him alive in the classroom, and each character had a song to help children recall the distinguishing feature and sound. With the help of the Letter People, children remained on-task, learned more quickly and retained what they learned. From the beginning, the children viewed the Letter People as real people and not just letters of the alphabet, phonics devices, or toys. On one occasion, when the Letter People had to be shipped to another school, the children insisted that holes be placed in the boxes so that the Letter People could breathe as they traveled.
Weimann and Friedman later sold the idea to New Dimensions in Education, Inc. which, in turn, copyrighted and published The Letter People educational products in 1968. NDE hired Elizabeth Callen to design the look of the characters in the classroom programs. NDE developed the concept into classroom programs: Alpha One in 1968, and Alpha Time in 1974.
In Alpha Time, the two-dimensional portrait card characters were made into three-dimensional, inflatable, child-sized vinyl characters commonly known as "The Huggables", which were large enough for small children to hug. Eventually, Alan J. Pratt, Ph.D., a director and vice-president of NDE, Inc. approached KETC-TV, a PBS affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri, about creating a TV series based on the escapades of the Letter People. After five pilot programs were produced, Dr. Pratt approached the Council of Great City Schools. Eventually, with the cooperation of the superintendents of the Council, NDE, and KETC-TV, a joint venture commenced. The series comprised sixty 15-minute episodes that became extremely popular nationwide with children who were learning to read. To insure phonetic and linguistic accuracy in the television production process, Ruth Lerner from NDE served as the Editorial Supervisor. Pratt was the Curriculum Consultant for the TV series. Tom McDonough of KETC-TV was the series' writer-director.
The program's basic concept was simple: Each letter of the English alphabet was represented by a unique character with traits derived from itself. The consonants were males, and the vowels were females. Reiss-Weimann, Friedman and Callen also wrote two series of books about the characters, Fables from the Letter People and Read-to-Me. Each Letter Person also had an accompanying song known as a "Huggables". Other merchandise included filmstrips and flash cards. Educators who adopted the program were trained in its implementation, and The Letter People was soon picked up by hundreds of schools across the US.
Abrams and Co. Publishers, Inc. revamped the Letter People program in 1996. However, the original 1968 program still has thousands of adult fans who remember learning how much fun it was learning to read with the help of The Letter People.

Television series

While thousands of children were learning about the Letter People in school, thousands of others were being exposed to them through the television series based on the program. The show was produced by PBS member station KETC in St. Louis, Missouri, and the show first went into production in 1972. The show was extremely popular with children, and it quickly spread to other television stations across the country, via syndication, mainly to PBS and educational stations.
The Letter People consists of 60 episodes. In each 15-minute installment, the Letter People undertake various adventures in Letter People Land, a dark, featureless place populated by strange people and creatures. Episodes usually focus on introducing new Letter People or new sounds formed by combining two Letter People together. Other episodes take the Letter People to more exotic locales such as outer space, while a few highlight the characters' conflicts over various sounds. Another common feature of the show is "the Catching Game", a game show hosted by Monty Swell where the Letter People must form words by positioning themselves correctly side-by-side.
The show has aired almost continuously since 1972.

Opening and closing sequence

A little dog is minding his own business when various figures enter the gates of Letter People Land as the song plays:

Episode guide

Revised

In 1990, Abrams & Co. Publishers Inc. of Austin, Texas, bought the rights to The Letter People from the previous owner, Norwalk, Connecticut-based New Dimensions in Education, Inc. The company gave the program a major update, revising it considerably. They changed the look of the characters and the associated materials. Lowercase letters were added to the back of each Letter Person. In 1996 the Abrams Company also made sweeping changes to over half of the Letter People themselves, most obviously equalizing the proportion of male to female characters. The male characters' names changed from "Mister" to "Mr.", and the female characters' names changed from "Miss" to "Ms.". All references to "junk food" were swapped for non-food-related characteristics. Any Letter People that Abrams deemed as expressing negative images were changed to be more positive. The Letter People storybooks were rewritten with an eye toward teaching conflict resolution and problem solving skills. They used Alphakid A as their mascot.
The program is divided into three levels with increasing emphasis on phonics: Let's Begin with the Letter People for preschool, Land of the Letter People for kindergarten, and Lives of the Letter People for first grade. The program is currently taught to about 30 million children.
Though the program is generally well received by educators, some have criticized its strong focus on phonics at the expense of other literacy-building techniques.
In the early 2010s, four new Letter People characters were added to the program in order to teach children Spanish. The four characters are Señorita Ch, Señor Ll, Señorita Ñ and Señor rr.

The Number People

Along with the original program of The Letter People, its mathematics-equivalent program The Number People was also created circa 1977. The Number People are referred to as numerical "friends" or "cousins" of the Letter People and were created to help children learn not only about numbers, their sounds and how many there are in each number, but also symbols, mathematics, time, addition, and measurement. They range from numbers 1-9, with odd numbers consisting of males and even numbers consisting of females. Each Number Person carries a number of objects to teach children how many there are to represent the number, and also represents the job they employ: Mister 1 as a scientist, Miss 2 as a doctor, Mister 3 as a pilot, Miss 4 as a construction worker, Mister 5 as a sports player, Miss 6 as a shape stacker, Mister 7 as an ice cream salesman, Miss 8 as a photographer, and Mister 9 as a magician.
Unlike The Letter People, The Number People was lesser-known and had very little products, including an Alpha Math workbook and a CD containing accompanying songs each Number Person had.
When The Letter People program was revamped in 1996, The Number People program was also revamped along with it, featuring six males and five females, with two new numbers 0 and 10 introduced. Each Number Person has the numeral placed to the top-right corner of his/her uniform, while a number word was also added to the back of each Number Person. A Spanish-language version was also available to teach the Spanish names of the numbers.

Place where the Letter People live

In the original 1968 program, the place where the Letter People live was originally called "Letter People Land ", but when the program was revised in 1990, it was renamed the "Land of the Letter People" in 1991 for Replacement of The Number People in 1993.
As the newly revised program in 1996 utilized the newer version of the characters, the Letter People's residence "Land of the Letter People" still remained the same Replaced the older one in 1993 The New Place will b Introduced Number People Town.
Ms. 1: One Wholesome Wacky Walnut
Mr. 2: Two Terrific Tacos
Mr. 3: Three Trendy Thumbs!
Mr. 4: Four Finally Funny Frogs
Mr. 5: Five Financial Freckled Faces
Ms. 6! Six Super Silly Snakes!
Mr. 7 Seven Superb Slippery Seals!
Mr. 8 Eight Exl. Extra Envelopes
Mr. 9 New! Normal Noses
Ms. 10 Top of The Charts Twirling tops!

List of Letter People

Original program (1968)

Television series

Songs

Strategy Tapes