Book Review: Hello, Neighbor: The Kind and Caring World of Mister Rogers by Matthew Cordell

Hello, Neighbor: The Kind and Caring World of Mister Rogers
by Matthew Cordell (j Biography Rogers)

This is the story of Fred Rogers, the man who became known to millions of children as Mister Rogers, the genial host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on PBS for 900 episodes, until the series wrapped production in 2001. This book is partially a biography of Rogers, in fairly simplistic “picture book” form, and partially a look at the “making of” and “behind-the-scenes” of his legendary television series.

 

Author Cordell was the 2018 Caldecott Medalist for his book Wolf in the Snow, and he brings his traditional art style to this story — capturing the essence of Fred Rogers (and other recognizable faces), without being slavish to realistic details. However, it is actually in the artistic details that some hidden gems are found, which you’ll find listed in a visual glossary at the end of the book.

 

Having grown up in the late 1960s and early 1970s — I was 5 when Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood premiered nationally in 1968 — I fondly remember the lessons of kindness, acceptance and appreciation taught in those episodes. I know that episodes of the series are available for viewing online. I only hope that the positive messages and Rogers’ gentle approach to child psychology can still find an audience with kids today, who are more accustomed to a higher-energy style of television programming.

 

(If you enjoy this, obviously, I recommend tracking down Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episodes in any format you can find them, or the modern successor, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Two films were released just a few years ago which I highly recommend — the touching and emotional documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor (2017) and the feature film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2018), in which Tom Hanks did a fine job portraying Rogers.)

 

( official Fred Rogers Institute web site ) | ( official Matthew Cordell web site )

 

See Scott C.’s review of The World According to Mister Rogers in the June 2017 Staff Recommendations here on BookGuide!
See Scott C’s review of the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? in the November 2018 Staff Recommendations here on BookGuide!
See Scott C’s review of the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood in the April 2020 Staff Recommendations here on BookGuide!
See Scott C’s review of Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in the May 2020 Staff Recommendations here on BookGuide!

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

DVD Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
[DVD Beautiful]

If you remember the ads for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, when it was in the theaters, you may have been misled into thinking it was a biographical portrait of Fred Rogers, the amiable host of the children’s educational television show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. It isn’t. In fact, “Mister Rogers” is a supporting character in this emotional story of reconciliation and forgiveness.

This story is based on the real-life experiences of author Tom Junod, who wrote an extended profile of Fred Rogers for a November 1998 Esquire Magazine article, “Can You Say…Hero?”. In this film, Junod has been changed to Lloyd Vogel, as portrayed by Matthew Rhys. Vogel is a hard-bitten, somewhat emotionally repressed man, known more for his journalistic articles that laid bare dark and dirty secrets on various topics. When his editor assigns him to do a small sidebar article on Fred Rogers for an Esquire issue dedicated to contemporary American heroes, Vogel thinks it’s a joke for a writer of his caliber. But he still heads to Philadelphia, and the studio where Rogers films his iconic television show. What he finds, in his first encounter/interview with Rogers (excellently portrayed by Tom Hanks), is a man of no artifice — the persona he shows to children, embracing their uniqueness and encouraging them to confront and embrace their complicated emotions — is the real man.

During the course of this film, Vogel’s encounters with Mister Rogers, who immediately adopts him as “my friend Lloyd Vogel”, help him to heal the critically damaged relationships he has with his father and his wife. The performances in this film, including both Hanks and Rhys, but also Chris Cooper as Vogel’s father, Susan Kelechi Watson as Vogel’s wife, Maryann Plunkett as Joanne Rogers, and Enrico Colantoni as Bill Isler, the real-life president of Roger’s production company, are all quite excellent.

My only complaint about this film is a few moments of surrealism as Lloyd has some hallucinatory dreams about Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Otherwise, this is a superb film. The DVD features numerous behind-the-scenes extras, that added much to my viewing experience. As someone who grew up on Mister Rogers and his oh-so-gentle embracing of the foibles of being a human being, I’ll admit I enjoyed the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? a bit more than this film, but they are good companion volumes to each other.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Won’t You Be My Neighbor?] [Check out Tom Junod’s original Esquire profile article of Fred Rogers.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!