The Letter P

There's peanuts, pears and popcorn./There's pickles, peppers, peas./There's pineapples and peaches,/and potatoes if you please./There's pizza, pie, there's pancakes/and pudding as a treat. Puh-puh-puh-puh./P is my favorite letter,/'Cause of all those foods to eat.

Penguins

"What my father figured out was if you can't get out, you just either blow something up, or you eat something, or you just throw penguins in the air." - Brian Henson.

In the Muppet world there are a select few animals who remain in a non-anthropomorphic state (well, less anthropomorphic). I mean, you've got a pig karate-chopping people and a bear who's telling jokes running around the set. You need some sort of stability to balance out the insanity.

The first penguin puppet was actually created by a young Brian Henson for The Muppet Show. Named Winky Pinkerton, he would perform bird calls and appeared throughout the third season until a group of penguins showed up near the end of that season.

Since then, penguins appear everywhere in both Muppet Theater and on Sesame Street. Never speaking, only quacking, waddling around, doing various things. They play music (even in full orchestras), they fire cannons, run around, play sports. The penguins are truly quacks of all trades.

Prairie Dawn

Wise beyond her years, Prairie Dawn is the most efficient 7 year-old ever. Mature, level-headed and frequently flustered by her wackier neighbors, Prairie loves writing and directing school pageants for her friends, mainly Bert, Ernie, Herry, Grover and Cookie Monster. Despite mainly being quiet and sweet-natured, Prairie aspires in a career in broadcasting or journalism.

Recently, Zoe and Abby Cadabby have been introduced to Sesame Street because there wasn't enough female influence and girls didn't have a character to look up to. On a show where there are characters for whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, muppets, monsters and cows, someone decided that Sesame Steet had no girls. Someone forgot about the determined career girl that is Prairie Dawn.

Even though she's a girl and more than half my age, when I grow up I wanna be Prairie Dawn. She's got her act together.