From the Musical Mind of Laurie Berkner

Laurie Berkner’s music is made for toe-tapping. With roots in early education, Laurie began her illustrious career in the niche genre of “kindie-rock” by producing catchy tunes for her students. Since then, Laurie has made a name for herself with charming, kid-friendly, parent-approved hits that include a creative medley of words and sounds to delight her listeners. Recently, she teamed up with FableVision and our Vice President of Creative, Tone Thyne, to bring the spirit of childhood whimsy to Zebra Penguin Skunk: Beach, the new animation from Sesame Studios that introduces young learners to an early understanding of engineering and creative problem-solving concepts. Right from the start, the project was a perfect fit for Laurie.

“To me, music is about connection. We use it to connect to concepts and to connect to other people, both of which are vital learning tools. The whole musical theme came to me the very first time I sat down and played along to the video,” says Laurie. “With this piece, I was purely inspired by watching the animation. I immediately heard a ukulele—partly because it takes place at the beach and because the uke can be made to sound simple and innocent.”

Read on as we chat with Laurie to learn more about how the two-toned trio of Zebra, Penguin, and Skunk sparked her creativity, her process behind composing a musical score, and all the new projects up her talented sleeves. And be sure to tune into Zebra Penguin Skunk: Beach exclusively available today on Sesame Studios!

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The New York Times calls you the “Adele of the preschool crowd.” How did you become interested in the “kindie rock” genre?
I started out as a preschool music teacher in various schools and daycare centers, and began writing songs to sing with the kids I saw every day. This was long before the term “kindie rock” had been coined. I loved the creativity and immediacy of making music with young kids and was thrilled when I realized I could actually make a career out of it.

What attracted you to Zebra Penguin Skunk: Beach?
As soon as I saw Zebra Penguin Skunk: Beach I fell in love with the animation. I had been thinking a lot about how I would like to try my hand at scoring something visual and paying a lot of attention to other people’s work in that field. It was such a wonderful surprise when FableVision reached out to me to work on this project! I was excited to create music representing these adorable characters who express so much without using words—just the way young children often do—and was immediately inspired the first time I sat down to explore some musical ideas. 

What was the process like working with FableVision and Tone Thyne on this project?
It was fantastic. Tone is not only funny, fun, and extremely easy to work with, he is also exceptionally talented. I fully trust his artistic instincts—especially when it comes to creating content for kids. The process could not have been smoother or more pleasurable.

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Neither Zebra, Penguin, or Skunk speak with words, but your music plays an important part in conveying the engineering challenge the trio face. When you were composing the music for Zebra Penguin Skunk, how did each of the characters inspire you?
I wanted Penguin to start out as the happy whistler and for that happy theme to go away whenever a challenge arose. When Skunk joins him and Penguin starts again to build a sandcastle, we hear the happy whistling come back. When they are both clearly disappointed at not being able to stop the water from ruining their work and Zebra finally appears, there is a pause in the whistling as we wait to see what he might do. The happy theme comes back as Zebra builds a wall—which finally allows them to protect their feat of engineering! I also loved using my guitar to express both the sad moments when the ocean would get the better of their structures and the bright spots of triumph when something they did worked!

Music is a crucial component of early childhood learning and development. As a former music teacher, why do you think music education is so important?
Music provides us with ways to express ourselves so that others understand us better and we get better at communicating. It allows us to use our creativity through our bodies and our minds, so it’s accessible to almost anyone. It is the best way to incorporate new information and to retain it. I think that shared musical experiences give us all a more open way of viewing the other people we share this planet with, both culturally and individually.

Your new book releases November 7 from Simon & Schuster, based on your popular song, Pillowland. What can you tell us about the book and what it was like adapting the song with Camille Garoche’s art?
I am so proud of this gorgeous book. I say that having had very little to do with the artwork! Unlike my previous picture book, We are the Dinosaurs, illustrated by Ben Clanton, where we talked through many ideas of what story the pictures would tell before he started working, Camille took the text she was sent and just ran with it. She uses a technique that is a combination of collage and diorama, and then she photographs her creations and finesses the final pictures digitally. She really created stunning illustrations for Pillowland and invented a visual dreamworld that beautifully expresses the ideas in the song. I love her portrayals of family in the story and characters in the music. 

Do you have any upcoming dates where people can hear you perform?
We will actually launch Pillowland at a release party on November 4 at the Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, NY. I will do a very short musical performance, read from the book, and sign the copies that are included in the ticket price. There will also be an ongoing art workshop based on Camille’s illustrations.

Laurie and her bandmates

Prior to that, I will do a Facebook Live concert on November 1 in honor of National Brushing Day. I’ll be sharing my tooth brushing song that I wrote for Tom’s of Maine and give everyone a sneak peek at the book.

I’m also performing many holiday shows with the band in November and December as well as solo shows coming up as soon as January 2018. You can see all of the details here on the concert page of my website. 

Any other new projects you’re working on?
Yes! We are just starting rehearsals for a project that I wrote the music for. It’s an Off-Broadway family musical produced by New York City Children’s Theater (NYCCT) called Interstellar Cinderella, based on the picture book written by Deborah Underwood,  with script by NYCCT’s Barbara Zinn Krieger. The story is a futuristic and feminist take on the original fairytale that is inspiring and fun! In a totally different musical direction, I also just released an album called Laurie Berkner: The Dance Remixes, where I made EDM (Electronic Dance Music) versions of 14 of my classic songs. I think it came out really well, and it’s a great way to get younger kids up and moving while providing older siblings with a trip down memory lane. 

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Check out Zebra Penguin Skunk: Beach! and be sure to subscribe to Sesame Studios for brand new videos to make you smarter, stronger, and kinder!

The Logical Journey of The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis: Part Three – Chicken Scratch Pie

A note from the FableVision editor: This blog series over the next few weeks is written by FableVision’s Tone Thyne, Vice President of Creative. This series will give you a front-row seat to what it’s like to create a show, an over-the-shoulder look at the creative work that Tone and Gary Goldberger, FableVision President and Co-Founder do here at the Studio. Curious about how we got here? Read more about Tone here, Zoombinis here, and download the game to play!

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Okay...here’s the fun part.

This is the part of the show-making process where I start to consider all the millions of different directions the show can take. At this stage, I intentionally don’t think about important details like, How would we pull this off from a production standpoint? How much money would this idea cost to make? Will this be a CG show, traditional drawn animation? Puppets? or How many spots do Spotted Flying Salamanders have and what region of the world do they actually hail from?

All those questions can be answered later. For now, this stage is all just pie in the sky.

The first and most important question I ask myself is, “What show would I (grown- up me) like to watch?” I know we’re ultimately making a show to appeal to a younger audience, but trust me – no kid is ever going to love a show that the show’s creator doesn’t love first.

With that directive, I grab a window seat on the MBTA, a blank sheet of paper, and a medium-fine-point Sharpie. While gazing at the world speeding by, I’m lulled into a trance. I make sure the conductor has my ticket first before any of this trance business happens. In this semi-conscious state, I’m able to transform the train window into a virtual television screen where I can watch the phantom show I’m dreaming up in real time. And as an added bonus – no commercials! As I visualize, I scribble what I see.

Don’t strain yourself. Let me help.

1. Narrator and his backstory
Throughout the entire Zoombinis game, there is an omnipotent Narrator who speaks to the player. This Narrator relays the backstory of our little blue friends and is present at every turn in the game – to set up a challenge and to remind the player when they’ve gotten something wrong. The Narrator takes a very objective stance – narrating what’s happening at each turn, but not really revealing too much.   

But who is this guy? And why does he know so much about the Zoombinis? Is he the puppet-master? Does he have anything to do with the Zoombinis’ plight? Perhaps the series centers on him and his story – inside and outside the game – and how the Zoombinis fit in to HIS world. Maybe he’s sort of like a major grown up Dungeons and Dragons geek...er, enthusiast who plays Zoombinis in the fantasy world in his mind?

2. Characters getting ready for Zoombinis to enter
As the player navigate the Zoombinis through the game, they encounter several interesting characters. Some examples are:

• The Stone Guards – Four stone characters who regulate the passing of the Zoombinis through the Stone Cold Caves.
• Arno – A grumpy Pizza Troll designed to look like a tree stump.
• Captain Cajun – The humanoid owner of the ferryboat in Who’s Bayou.
• The Fleens – Small and easily aggravated green creatures who harbor a significant distaste for the Zoombinis. The list goes on and on.

What if our series revolved around these and the other characters in the game? We could follow their day-to-day activities and like them, await the Zoombinis’ arrival in each episode. In this incarnation, the Zoombinis themselves are minor characters to the others.

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3. Actors playing Zoombinis
Here’s a weird one. What if the series was extremely self-referential? The whole series could be the “backstage” goings-on of the game. There could be a set of actors who play the characters in the game – including the Zoombinis themselves. Our show would be what happens when the “cameras aren’t rolling” during the “filming of the game.” Sort of like a Real Hollywood Story of Zoombinis.

4. Scot as a kid
As mentioned before, Scot and the team at TERC brought Zoombinis to the world in the early nineties, but who knows how long they had been mulling and creeping and crawling around in Scot’s brain before that? What if the series took a young boy (named Scot perhaps) and showcased him playing with imaginary characters he’s made up? Maybe he calls them “Zoombinis” and he acts out adventures in every episode? Maybe we watch him creating the elements that will eventually become parts of the game. Like watching Jim Henson sewing the Kermit puppet out of his Mom’s green coat.

Hey, I didn’t say any of these ideas were good yet.

I simply can’t get the image of that scrumptious looking pumpkin pie I used as an illustration way back in paragraph one so I’ll naturally close with a possibly over-reaching pie analogy. Gary and I are headed over to see Scot Osterweil in a couple days and we’ll take this list with us as a starting point. These four ideas are going to form the foundation for the discussion between Gary, Scot, and me. A veritable crust of sorts. Our goal is to walk out of our meeting with all the good stuff that makes up the delicious filling of the pie. Once that’s done, we can put the icing on top and share with the world. That’s gonna need to be one giant pie.

Off to MIT.
See you next time. 

The Logical Journey of The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis: Part Two — Rolling the Snowball

A note from the FableVision editor: This blog series over the next few weeks is written by FableVision’s Tone Thyne, Vice President of Creative. This series will give you a front-row seat to what it’s like to create a show, an over-the-shoulder look at the creative work that Tone and Gary Goldberger, FableVision President and Co-Founder do here at the Studio. Curious about how we got here? Catch up on Part One of the series here, and read more about Tone here, Zoombinis here, and download the game to play!

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 I may not be exaggerating when I say I’ve been playing Zoombinis during every waking moment over the past couple weeks and there’s a chance I’ve actually spent a few more hours in Zoombiniville than the Zoombinis themselves. And my 10 year-old son has officially decided he wants my job when he grows up.

As for Zoombinis, I finally get the hype. It’s an incredibly addicting romp for someone like me who thrives on puzzles, logic challenges, and perseverance. The game is “deliberately designed with no tutorial or instructions with the intent of teaching kids to explore, develop theories, and test their ideas” so I’ve had to figure it all out on my own. That’s some accomplishment.

Here’s what I learned, in no particular order:

• As a player, your goal is to navigate a group of little blue creatures called “Zoombinis” through different screens and ultimately on to their new home, Zoombiniville.
• Players use strategy and logic to solve the puzzles that allow the Zoombinis to move safely through different screens.
• The Zoombinis don’t have personalities or voices. They don’t even have arms. Although they are the main focus of the game, they pretty much go along for the players’ ride.

That’s the major CliffsNotes version. We’ll touch more on aspects of the game as we move through this journey of the Journey.

So – the big question –  how to turn this game into a show?

Let’s start with Laurie Brennan, David Libby, Glen Secor, Jodi Asbell-Clarke, and Teon Edwards to get a sense of what their hopes and dreams look like. Gary and I ventured to Cambridge to meet with the TERC team.

TERC, Gary and I discussed the massive fan base Zoombinis has amassed and how disappointed the devotees would be if the series were to veer too off-course from the beloved property. It’s far more common to create a digital game from a broadcast property than what we’re trying to pull off with Zoombinis. Game first – then series. Then again, there was this gem from 1982:

We want viewers to be able to toggle back and forth from watching the series to playing the game as a multi-platform experience, rather than different incarnations of the same property. So it’s really important to me that the Zoombinis characters in our series shouldn’t be cooler than the characters in the game. In other words, since the Zoombinis don’t talk or emote in the game, I think it would be strange for them to each have voices and personalities like The Smurfs. Although they can still be blue.

What that means is we need to create an engaging set of main characters that should connect with our young viewers – but do so without talking. It’s a bit like creating a theatrical production featuring a herd of mollusks. (Not the world’s worst idea.) 

So I proposed the Zoombinis series could perhaps take a page from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or Wicked – exploring the story from a different perspective. Perhaps watching the Zoombinis along their journey from the view of ancillary characters in the game who interact with the little blues? It may be an interesting way to feature the Zoombinis – without expecting them to do any of the heavy lifting (after all, they don’t have any arms.) 

Scot Osterweil, at right, showing off Zoombinis to a fan.

TERC was intrigued, and so Gary and I immediately set a meeting with Scot Osterweil at MIT. Scot is the grandaddy of all Zoombinis. Actually, to be more specific, he’s their dad. The Zoombinis sprung from his imagination in the early nineties when he worked at TERC with Chris Hancock, together developing what would eventually become the beloved game. 

Scot, Gary and I are going to meet next week in Scot’s office to volley ideas around. I’ll come armed with some concepts I’ve been mulling since the meeting with TERC to avoid the dreaded: “What do you want to do?”  “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”  “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” 

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I love animation because by nature, it is a cumulative process.  Each important step along the production line allows the project to grow bigger and better.  Imagine a kid rolling a snowball through a field of snow.  As it gets bigger, another kid may need to help roll it.  The further the kids roll the snowball, the larger it becomes. Pretty soon, it’s so enormous and so magnificent that several kids need to help roll it.  Show creation is precisely that.

Gary and I are going to roll our snowball over to MIT to see how much bigger and better Scot can help us make it.  See you next time.

The Logical Journey of The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis: Part One — Where It All Begins

A note from the FableVision editor: This blog series over the next few weeks is written by FableVision’s Tone Thyne, Vice President of Creative. This series will give you a front-row seat to what it’s like to create a show, an over-the-shoulder look at the creative work that Tone and Gary Goldberger, FableVision President and Co-Founder do here at the Studio. Curious about how we got here? Read more about Tone here, Zoombinis here, and download the game to play!

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In 1981, I had my 12th birthday at the totally tubular arcade at our local mall called Aladdin’s Castle: “The Ultimate Party Place” as their tokens boasted. That year, I also got PITFALL and KABOOM for my Atari 2600. I had achieved 8-bit adolescent nirvana.

Soon after though, my attention turned toward animation, MTV, and Lizzie Rossman. Video games sort of drifted out of my orbit, to use a Space Invaders reference, and never really drifted back. Until last month, when The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis popped up deliberately onto my radar screen. Or more specifically, when Gary Goldberger, FableVision’s Co-Founder and President, put it there.

This is Gary. Get to know that face (and those thumbs) well because Gary is going to be a main character in this blog series. He’s a dear friend, a wonderful colleague, and knows more about digital media than anyone I know. He is to digital what I am to children’s programming and so we make for fantastic partners at FableVision. Gary has spent the last 20+ years establishing FableVision’s respectable presence in the world of digital media and has been pivotal in connecting the dots between FableVision and The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis.

Zoombinis (for short) was a 1996 CD-ROM equivalent of what we today would refer to as a viral sensation. If you were a kid or a parent of a kid in the mid-‘90s, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

When I arrived at FableVision a couple of years ago, Gary and the team at FableVision had been working closely with our good friends at TERC to resurrect the phenom for a whole new generation of super fans on modern mobile devices.

Together, TERC and FableVision caused a certain portion of the internet (the one populated by nostalgic 20-something Zoombinis enthusiasts who credit the game with their reason for living) to completely blow up when they released an updated version of Zoombinis.

I get out of my jammies and come to FableVision every morning to create innovative, charming children’s properties, and given the tremendous reception of the Zoombinis release, it seemed only natural for Gary to suggest that together we create an original television series based on the beloved game.

(NOTE: Given the tremendous amount of digital platforms offering original programming these days, the term television series is about to go the way of answering machines, payphones, and VCRs. Broadcast series is a far more relevant term.)

Now, before we start creating anything, I need you to meet someone. This is my dear friend, Kate. She’s the one on the left.

Kate is one of those friends we all need in our life. If I didn’t want to keep her all to myself, I’d introduce you so she could be your friend too. She’s the world’s greatest cheerleader and thinks everything I do is brilliant. See why I like Kate so much? Kate loves when I share my show ideas with her and she is unapologetically gobsmacked by the process. Kate is an accomplished novelist, yet awe-struck by the world of show creation. Here’s one of her classics: “I don’t even understand how someone’s brain even comes up with something like this!”

So for all the other Kate’s in the world that wonder how brains come up with shows, Gary and I decided it might be fun to take you along with us on our journey to develop Zoombinis into a broadcast property. Hence, this blog. 

Until I read about FableVision and TERC’s recent Zoombinis release, I had no idea what Zoombinis even was. You see, when 1996 rolled around, my joystick and AV cables were packed deeply in Styrofoam peanuts and I was busy picking out china patterns, reception venues, and cake toppers.  But there was enough excited buzz in the ether to become instantly intrigued.

As of today, Gary and I have no idea what in the world we’re going to dream up, but you’ll be by our side as the bulbs over our collective heads begins to illuminate.  

Before we embark on our logical journey, my first order of business, as I see it, is to download the app and get intimately familiar with the game and the world and the characters. I have to catch up to Gary and the Zoombinis’ giant network of fans!

I mean, seriously, what in the world is this game?? Is that a talking tree stump? Why do the little blue guys have no arms? Is that a pizza sitting on a rock? I’ve got my work cut out for me as I catch up.

If you’re not already there either, click here to download the game (scroll down for links to download Zoombinis on tablets, desktops, and Steam) to get Zoombinis on tablets, desktops, and Steam) and come along with me as I familiarize myself with the cult classic.

Early next week, Gary and I are meeting with both the team at TERC and Zoombinis creator Scot Osterweil to begin to volley ideas. I’ll be sure to document everything we discuss and  write all about it here. That will really put my friend Kate (and hopefully you) on the edge of your seats.

For now, I’ve got to go play Zoombinis. See you next time.