Sunny Days captures a period in children's television where enlightened progressivism prevailed, and shows how this period changed the lives of millions. This is both a fun and fascinating story, and a masterful work of cultural history. Kamp explains how these like-minded individuals found their way into television, not as fame- or money-hungry would-be auteurs and stars, but as people who wanted to use TV to help children. He draws on hundreds of hours of interviews from the creators and participants of these programs-among them Joan Ganz Cooney, Lloyd Morrisett, Newton Minow, Sonia Manzano, Loretta Long, Bob McGrath, Marlo Thomas, and Rita Moreno-as well as archival research. In Sunny Days, bestselling author David Kamp takes readers behind the scenes to show how these programs made it on air. There was more: programs such as The Electric Company, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, ZOOM, and others followed, and captivated young viewers. You and Me, the TV star Marlo Thomas's audacious multi-pronged campaign (it was first a record album, and then a book and a television special) to instill the concept of gender equality in young minds.

Fast on its heels came Schoolhouse Rock!, a video series dreamed up by Madison Avenue admen to teach kids times tables, civics, and grammatical rules, and Free to Be. A year and a half earlier, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood premiered.

Sesame Street was part of a larger movement that saw media professionals and thought leaders leveraging their influence to help children learn. No one knew then, but this children's TV program would go on to start a cultural revolution. They hoped, too, that they had identified a solution: to use television to better prepare these disadvantaged kids for school. They had identified a social problem: poor children were entering kindergarten without the learning skills of their middle-class counterparts.

'In 1970, in soundstage on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a group of men and women of various ages and races met to finish the first season of a children's TV program.

Sunny Days by David Kamp