From the bayous of Louisiana to the arroyos of Albuquerque and everywhere in between, America’s Awesome Kids, GBH Kids’ new series, showcases the cultures and passions of children throughout the country. Taking viewers on a journey across our wide and wonderful nation, the live action, short-form mini-documentary series, produced in tandem with 23 partnering PBS stations, captures how exemplary kids are making an impact in their local communities.
Part of GBH’s America 250 initiative, the series celebrates remarkable children who represent the best of our country’s present and future. Their stories are of service, enthusiasm, and effusive joy: diverse as our many tight-knit communities, alike in their shared commitment to care for their neighbors and the land they call home.
We sat down with Dorothea Gillim, Executive Producer and Creative Director of GBH Kids, to talk about the making of this series, her hopes for it, and what lessons America’s Awesome Kids has in store for kids, caregivers, educators, and all of us.
America’s Awesome Kids highlights 25 children from across the United States. What was that process like, identifying the kids and getting these shorts made?
It was challenging. We had a very short window for casting — about three weeks — so we worked in collaboration with public media stations to find the kids. The stations leveraged their connections to local organizations and GBH found other avenues to seek out Awesome Kids for the series.
After the kids submitted their audition tapes, we narrowed down the field to three or four candidates. And then we came to a decision with each local station on who would be featured as their state’s Awesome Kid.
What were the qualities you were looking for?
We were looking for kids who are helpers in one way or another. One of the goals of this series is to impart civic responsibility — being good neighbors and contributing to a community. Another was to help children appreciate different perspectives. The kids we featured have such a diversity of interests and cultures, so the shorts really show the broad spectrum of what it means to be a kid in the United States.
For example, an Indian-American girl named Sahana represents Georgia; she started the Helping Hearts Girls Club with her friends and they do community clean-ups in their local park. In Wisconsin, we joined Marie, an Indigenous girl, at a powwow.
The list goes on and on. Our tagline is, “All kinds of awesome kids, one awesome country,” and I think we lived up to that, highlighting the tremendous diversity of what it means to be an American, as well as what’s unique and great about kids in America today.
So local PBS stations filmed the spots with the children and then sent them to GBH Kids for editing and production?
Yes. We worked closely with those local stations to develop the stories we wanted to tell, then they did the shoots and sent us the footage, which we edited to ensure continuity across all the shorts.
How important was it to leverage the local expertise and community connections across the public media system?
Oh, huge. It was such a differentiator because these stations know the best local stories, and they also have the access — having developed deep relationships in their communities — that helped us find kids and tell their stories.
When we worked with Iowa PBS, they introduced us to a young girl, Mahry, who lives on a llama farm. We knew immediately we had to have her on the show. Her family has a long-standing relationship with a senior home where they bring the llamas for animal-assisted therapy, so Iowa PBS followed her there, as well as to her family’s home for an event called “Llama-ween,” where they dress the llamas up in Halloween costumes and invite the public to escort a llama through a haunted barn. It was so hilarious and wonderful, and exactly the kind of story we wanted to feature that we never would have known about without the local station’s help.
It was also really wonderful to be working with other public media stations now, at this time, when all of us are feeling the impact of the loss of federal funding. We’re all doubling down on our mission, and this project was a great way to bring stations together in a way that uplifts these inspiring kids. We really enjoyed the process of working together on this project. And it was very informative for us, because we got to know the stations — their unique strengths and resources — and how best to work with them.
Were there other standout moments in the development of the series?
So many! Working with WXXI in Rochester, New York, we found this girl, Arwyn, who’s Deaf. WXXI has a very strong accessibility department, and they identified Arwyn thanks to their connections to the Deaf community in Rochester. They used their expertise working with that community to help us think through the best way to represent her story — advising us to find an ASL translator for the short and to have Arwyn’s best friend voice her commentary.
Then there’s Tessa, of Winthrop, Massachusetts. Our line producer, Melissa Pollard knew their family was really involved in the Fourth of July celebrations in Winthrop. They have a “Horribles Parade,” which dates back more than a century
How does this series figure into GBH’s America 250 initiative?
We were really thinking about it from a kid’s perspective: what is this 250th birthday about? It comes down to celebrating those common bonds across kids’ experiences in America, as well as what’s unique and different. All of that can coexist in this country.
Are there any other elements of America’s Awesome Kids that you’re producing alongside the series?
GBH Kids is producing and distributing fifty thousand maps of the U.S. to public media stations across the country for their America 250 celebrations. They come with stickers, each with a different clue on it, so that kids are encouraged to watch the shorts and place the sticker on the corresponding state. If they see one with a llama on it, they’ll know, “Oh, this sticker is for Mahry in Iowa.” The map and stickers encourage kids to watch the shorts and try the fun activities, testing what they’ve learned.
What do you hope this series affirms for the kids and caregivers watching?
Kindness, empathy, appreciation of differences, an interest in helping your community, and creative self-expression.
I hope kids come away feeling more represented — in light of the children we’re highlighting — and that they’re able to learn from the children they see on-screen. We often return to the mirrors and windows metaphor in children’s media: we want kids to feel reflected in what they see, and we want to give them a window into others’ experiences.
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Watch all of America’s Awesome Kids episodes on the PBS Kids Video app, or on PBSKids.org. Viewers can also tune into the America’s Awesome Kids YouTube channel, where two episodes will be released weekly. Finally, you can watch a shortened version of America’s Awesome Kids episodes daily after Alma’s Way on GBH Kids.
On Saturday, June 20, from 11 AM to 1 PM, stop by the GBH Studio at the Boston Public Library for an America’s Awesome Kids event, free and open to the public. The program includes a Q&A with both of New England’s Awesome Kids — Tessa of Mass. and Solomon of Maine — as well as fun activities for the awesome kids in attendance.
