Emily McGonagle was watching cartoons with her sons when she decided to embark on a career change. A decade on, she is a star of a globally popular children’s series

Emily McGonagle was on maternity leave from her job as a lawyer, juggling the care of her new baby and her toddler son, when the daily diet of TV cartoons made her think about an unlikely career change.

Watching Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol, her older son’s favourites, “it occurred to me: who does this job?”, says the 42-year-old from Essex. “How do you get into it? Even when I was watching TV commercials, I’d think: well, how do you do that?”

After Meghan appeared on MasterChef Australia this year, co-host Poh Ling Yeow says being reunited with the Duchess on the children’s version ‘will be a real treat’

The Duchess of Sussex is set to co-host Junior MasterChef Australia, the children’s version of the popular televised cooking competition, in 2027.

Meghan made her debut appearance on the adult version of MasterChef Australia in July this year, which was filmed during a four-day visit to Australia with Prince Harry in April. Network 10 said the Duchess’s appearance on the show drew its “largest Sunday audience since 2023”.

As streamers poach viral creators to appeal to children, digital whack-a-mole has become a new kind of family challenge

Exasperated dad Simon Hooper shakes his fist at the camera in a viral video. “We managed to get rid of YouTube in our household six months ago and the kids are finally OK with it,” he says – but Netflix is “now commissioning YouTubers to make their brain rot and putting it back in front of my kids’ faces”.

The precise “brain rot” he’s referring to is the arrival of a polarising show that’s lighting up parent chats around the globe. And while Salish and Jordan Matter might be new to Netflix Kids users, the father-daughter content creators are familiar to anyone who’s spent any time on the internet.

New York event hears about the red Muppet’s fears during a recent storm as climate crisis increasingly affects children

A generation of political leaders has failed to galvanize sufficient action on the climate crisis for so long now that it was perhaps little surprise that an audience in New York City turned to a three-and-a-half-year-old red furry monster for inspiration on Tuesday.

Elmo, the Sesame Street denizen, made a starry appearance at a Climate Week event that highlighted how the impacts of global heating affect children. The red creature, who frequently refers to himself in the third person, recounted to the audience his fear when a storm hit Sesame Street, an event depicted in a recent episode that featured the singer Post Malone.

Does your child’s favourite show give them a chance to reflect, or does it move too quickly for its lessons to sink in?

• A version of this piece was originally published on Aeon as The bombarding of childhood

I am at the airport gate waiting to depart, watching passengers hurry past with rolling suitcases and paper cups of coffee. A small boy sits very still beside his mother. He holds an iPad close to his chest, almost in a cramp, clutching the screen as if it might otherwise run away. I hear loud clapping hands and squeaking children’s voices. I lean over and see a cartoon character in green snatch a toy from another character in pink. The pink character begins to cry, tears splashing like sprinkles from its enormous eyes. The green character shouts sorry. Instantly, the tears stop and a wide smile replaces them before I have blinked. And, before I have even worked out whether the characters are speaking English or Arabic (as the mother does to the boy), the scene has changed and the two characters are rowing a boat with a random song in the background. The boy’s eyes dart on the screen from right to left, centre, down. His body is still but his attention is being hurried from cue to cue.

This is the problem I have come to think of as the pace of children’s media.

Make, Believe, Magic show at Goma stars Elmo, Big Bird and the massive Mr Snuffleupagus – and gives visitors the chance to try their hand at puppeteering

It’s said that celebrities are often shorter than you might expect when you encounter them in person. The opposite is true of the Muppets.

“That’s the quote of this show,” says Amanda Slack-Smith, curator at Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art (Goma), where “Oh, it’s bigger than I thought it would be!” has become a catchcry among the Goma crew installing Make, Believe, Magic: The Worlds of the Jim Henson Company.

Stranded on an island full of prehistoric animals, the Paw Patrol squad get stuck in in a remarkably charmless animation

The Paw Patrol pups – that’s Chase, Marshall, Skye, Rocky, Rubble and Zuma – are engaged in a rescue mission as this latest film instalment of the puppy rescue team series opens. A family on a yacht are in danger of being burned alive, and the plucky dogs are all that stands between them and a crispy fried demise. Unfortunately, it’s a little difficult to root for this family, the annoying teenaged son in particular, who is either an influencer or wannabe influencer. Obviously nobody deserves to die on the basis of their being an influencer, but building a rescue sequence around one feels a bit like if Jurassic Park were about trying to save dino-embryo-thief Dennis Nedry, instead of having him meet his demise at the hands and claws and teeth of a dilophosaurus with impeccable comic timing.

Speaking of Jurassic Park, that’s more or less where the plucky pups end up after the yacht rescue: a storm blows them off course to a mysterious island that boasts a T rex and other assorted prehistoric beasties. None of what transpires as a result is particularly entertaining, and we can only urge families to vote with their wallets and hand over their hard-earned to higher quality children’s entertainment.

Judge orders removal of all Wolfoo videos from online platforms after finding ‘prolific’ copyright infringement

The corporate owners of Peppa Pig have won a copyright battle against the copycat animation Wolfoo after a judge ruled the latter had illegally used audio from the famous cartoon pig.

The US-headquartered entertainment company Hasbro, which owns the rights to Peppa Pig, sued SConnect – the Vietnamese makers of Wolfoo – for copyright infringement regarding videos which used short audio clips of Peppa and her family saying words such as “Hooray!”

Canadian-born British operator, president of the British Puppet Guild, died after a ‘short illness’

Ronnie Le Drew, best known for operating the puppet Zippy on the classic children’s television programme Rainbow, has died aged 78 after a short illness. The news was confirmed by the British Puppet Guild, of which Le Drew was president.

The Canadian-born British puppeteer was also known for working on 1986’s Labyrinth alongside David Bowie as well as 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors and various Muppet movies including in 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol. He worked on various iterations of Sooty, alongside Harry and Matthew Corbett, usually as Sweep, Sooty’s sidekick.

Politicians are claiming that a hit Netflix animation is Russian propaganda aimed at the ‘militarisation of children’. But it’s far from a recent problem – even the CIA has funded kids’ entertainment

When Liberal Democrat MP Tom Gordon spoke earlier this month in the commons of the “militarisation of children”, he wasn’t warning of a generation suddenly taking arms. He was talking about a cartoon bear. Gordon, along with a cross-party group of more than 50 MPs, had written a parliamentary letter urging that an animated children’s show be banned on the basis it is Russian propaganda.

The accused animation is Masha and the Bear, a Russian programme aimed at preschoolers. The show is one of the most popular series on YouTube, and is available in the UK on ITVX and Netflix. The programme follows the adventures of the young, pink-hooded Masha and her brown bear companion in a remote woodland. But MPs – as well as Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation and Estonia’s minister for foreign affairs – see Masha’s use of Soviet-era military costumes as a flex of Russian “soft power”.

In this week’s newsletter: The last time they were a British screen staple was the mid-90s. Once a genuine cultural phenomenon, the Wombles could be successfully resurrected – or derided as woke

At the height of Womble-mania in the mid-70s, Elisabeth Beresford, creator of the snout-nosed, litter-collecting sensations, laid down three strict ground rules for anyone appearing in costume as her characters: no smoking; no drinking; and absolutely no taking your head off in public.

The latter was a real problem: in 1974 a cabaret club in Liverpool was forced to sack the entire cast of Wombles – the cast provided by theatre impresario and future Everton FC chairman Bill Kenwright, no less – after a disastrous opening night performance of their Christmas panto that featured inaudible singing, under-rehearsed dance routines, Wombles that looked “too thin” and, most unforgivably, one of the cast members removing their head in the theatre wings “in full view of the children”, according to the club’s director. Things got worse at another shambolic Wombles performance in Belfast, which was cut short after less than an hour, after booing, catcalls and furious mothers storming the stage, brandishing handbags and umbrellas.

Five episodes have been dubbed into Australian language Yolŋu Matha for Naidoc Week, with Bandit voiced by a founding member of rock band King Stingray

It’s already been translated into 120 languages around the world but soon the globally loved children’s show Bluey will be available in an Australian Indigenous language for the first time.

Five episodes from seasons one and two have been dubbed into Yolŋu Matha, the Australian First Nations language of North-east Arnhem Land, as part of an initiative for National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee (Naidoc) Week.

Litter-picking creatures emerge from underground for global franchise targeting nostalgic adults and gen Alpha

Move over Paddington Bear. After almost 30 years off screen, the Wombles – the furry, litter-picking creatures who live beneath Wimbledon Common – are set for a comeback.

The characters, whose motto is “Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish”, are being revived after the consolidation of the brand’s intellectual property rights under The Blair Partnership, which will oversee its global development.

He’s pink, dotty and as British as a Boots meal deal. In recent months he’s duetted with pop stars, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been declared the UK’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse. What’s behind this strange comeback?

Margaret Thatcher wasn’t to blame for the closure of Britain’s coalmines. Mr Blobby was. A harrowing spoof documentary exposed this horrific truth during the finale of Saturday Night Live UK’s debut season. Back in 1992, drilling activity at Nottinghamshire’s Grumthorpe Colliery awoke an evil entity buried underground. Mr Blobby promptly went on an unstoppable murderous rampage, ripping off miners’ limbs and becoming “an atom bomb made flesh”.

Mr Blobby being disinterred is an apt metaphor. Recent months have seen the pink-and-yellow agent of chaos unearthed and on the comeback trail. He has appeared on primetime TV shows, duetted with popstars, and convinced nostalgic punters to part with a surprising amount of cash to get their hands on Blobby-themed merchandise. What has prompted the comeback of a character once considered irredeemably naff?

Something Special, his show for children with special educational needs, has earned its star Justin Fletcher an MBE, children’s Baftas and generations of fans. Our writer and his daughter spend a day in the company of CBeebies royalty

After a long, hot, summer’s day drive, we finally arrive at Mr Tumble’s house (which for today’s filming is located in rural Oxfordshire), and suddenly everything looks just like it does on TV. There are the coloured spotty flags, the spotty Tumble Sofa and – at the centre of it all – Mr Tumble in his trademark orange shirt, stripy yellow trousers and red nose. As my 11-year-old daughter, Molly, runs on set to greet this giant of children’s broadcasting, I don’t know who feels more starstruck: her or me.

We’re here to watch the filming of the latest series of Something Special, the CBeebies show specifically aimed at children with delayed learning and communication skills, although all children tend to love it. Its star Mr Tumble, AKA Justin Fletcher, stops to show us his famous props: the Tumble Tapp – his specially modified iPad – and the Spotty Bag. We sit on the Tumble Sofa and, as we sing and sign along to the famous Hello Song, I’ve never felt under more pressure to perform: “Hello, hello. How are you? Hello, hello. It’s good to see … Molly.”

In the hugely popular pre-school animation, composer Joff Bush references and rearranges classical tunes in all the right places – and never plays it for cheap laughs. Plus, the Wigmore Hall sees the writing on the wall

Classical music’s continued battle for relevance and impact continues to find new nadirs, from tired experiments with formats to bathetic look-at-me clickbait. But what if there was an answer – a joyous, creative and positive one – staring at us with irresistibly big eyes?

There really might be, in the shape of a blue heeler puppy. I’m talking, of course, about Bluey, the Australian cartoon for children of all ages. The numbers are huge: it was the most streamed show in the US last year, with more than 45bn minutes watched, and a billion streams and counting across the world for Bluey’s albums and soundtracks, all written by Joff Bush, the Australian musician who has led the composition of the music for each of the 154 episodes so far.

It’s not simply that kids’ culture has improved since I was young. Across stage, screen and cinema, grownup offerings pale in comparison to those aimed at my son

World Book Day dawns once more, with its morning chorus of swearing and sticky tape. This year, it falls shortly before we’re throwing a Harry Potter birthday party, so the living room has already surrendered to chocolate frogs and wand clay and preparations for the Dobby Sock Toss. Good timing, then. If you’ve already made a Nagini piñata, what’s one more hippogriff for the list?

Is competitive cosplay the best way to foster a love of literature in young people? That’s for finer minds than mine to debate, but with books like these, I’m surprised it’s required. What a time to have recently mastered phonics. What reluctant reader could fail to laugh at Mr Gum, or indeed anything by Andy Stanton? Who wouldn’t be thrilled by Louis Sachar or Lottie Brooks or Malorie Blackman?

The queen of children’s edutainment is back after four very long months, with her most extraordinary, envelope-pushing and moving special yet. Cue absolute relief for parents the world over

For those whose cultural experiences are largely absorbed through the prism of their mewling infants’ demands for the same thing 437 times in a row, it’s been a long four months. In late October last year, Rachel Accurso released Brush Your Teeth Song with Ms Rachel and Elmo. The 48m views it has since racked up reflect its status as a solid addition to the Ms Rachel canon, and the whole thing is obviously enhanced by Elmo’s guest spot. But it was studded with reheated clips from previous compilations, such as The Wheels on the Bus from Blippi & Ms Rachel Learn Vehicles, and It’s Potty Time from Potty Training With Ms Rachel. There is a limit to the number of plays an adult can reasonably be expected to endure of a bear puppet in a nappy hymning his ability to relieve himself, and the Ms Rachel hive is thirsting for something new.

Enter, on Friday, Learn With Ms Rachel – Friendship & Social Skills, an hour-long compendium, in which the leviathan of contemporary children’s edutainment helps her guests “model important social skills such as kindness, taking turns, sharing, asking a friend to play and helping others”. A few minutes on any of the subreddits that pore over Ms Rachel content clarifies the weight of this cultural moment. Or you could ask my two-year-old about it.

This starry half-hour anniversary special captures the spirit of the original TV show at points, and will delight younger viewers. But Kermit’s voice takes some getting used to …

The Muppet Show celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Or so it is alleged. Obviously this cannot be true, because it would mean that all of us who remember gathering around the television for the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational half hour of the week must also be … Well, anyway. Let us not dwell.

Let us remember instead the magic that ensued as Jim Henson’s creation unfurled before us, as the chaotic troupe of puppets put on their traditional vaudeville show. The permanent cast included the inimitable Miss Piggy (“I don’t care what you think of me. Unless you think I am awesome, in which case you are right”), Gonzo, the Swedish Chef, sombre patriot Sam Eagle (“Freakos one, civilisation zero”), assorted pigs (often in space), scientist Dr Bunsen Honeydew and his heartbreakingly hapless assistant Beaker (the latter granting some of us our first stirrings of true empathy), and many, many chickens. There was also a guest appearance each episode by a famous human comedian, actor or musician. It could be anyone from Julie Andrews to Dudley Moore, as long as they could be trusted to play it straight and believe in their co-stars. It was all held together, if only just, by earnest, frazzled host and stage manager Kermit the Frog and his assistant, Scooter, despite constant heckling from the exquisitely cantankerous Statler and Waldorf looking down on the show, in every sense, from their box seats.

Australian children’s cartoon series about a family of blue heelers has yet to announce a new season

Australian-made animated series Bluey was the most streamed show in the US for the second year in a row, topping Nielsen’s annual year-end streaming charts for 2025.

US viewers watched 45.2bn minutes of the show on Disney+ according to Nielsen, down from 55.62bn in 2024, but still impressive given the show comprises 154 episodes – most of them less than 10 minutes’ long.