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"By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge
the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches." ~Proverbs 24:3-4

Wishbone: The Little Dog with a Big Imagination

Do you remember Wishbone? I have fond memories of viewing Wishbone with my son years ago. He used to watch the show when it originally aired from 1995 to 2000, but his little brother was too young to appreciate it and our youngest son wasn’t even born yet. So I was really happy when our local PBS station started showing Wishbone re-runs this summer!

My oldest son has long outgrown children's television shows, but now my 12- and 7-year-old can watch Wishbone for the “first” time. When the new fall programming started, I was afraid that they would take Wishbone off the air again, but they are still showing it. If you live in Arizona, it’s on KAET Channel 8, weekdays at 3:00 pm. Hopefully it is also airing on some other PBS stations.

Anyone who likes books, libraries, or dogs would love this entertaining and educational program. Wishbone is an intelligent and witty Jack Russell Terrier that imagines himself in various roles from classic books. As he gets involved in real-life adventures that parallel those in the famous stories, this emphasizes their timeless and universal themes. Interestingly, the people in Wishbone’s daydreams see him as whatever famous character he is portraying and not as a dog.

One of the great things about Wishbone was that, in contrast to Disney, it didn’t sugarcoat the sad or tragic aspects of the source works. These include such classic literature as Romeo & Juliet, Faust, Joan of Arc, Don Quixote, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Robin Hood, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Hound of the Baskervilles, The Three Musketeers, etc. Multicultural episodes include African folktales, Tales from the Arabian Nights, Navajo storytelling, Greek and Roman myths, a Chinese Buddha legend, and they even did the story of David and Goliath from the Bible.

Wishbone was such a unique concept, it’s too bad they didn’t make more of them. Even forty half-hour episodes don’t seem like enough when there is so much great literature available from which to choose. While entertaining children and families nationwide with a refreshing combination of action, adventure, romance, tragedy and comedy, the show won Daytime Emmies, a Peabody award, and honors from the Television Critics Association.

Wishbone was filmed in Plano, Texas, and a rotating cast of Dallas stage actors filled the various fantasy roles. There was both a contemporary set and a fantasy set built for each episode. There were actually three dogs that played Wishbone; one that did all of the close-ups and two stunt dogs, all fully costumed. The voice of Wishbone was Larry Brantley, a former stand-up comedian who specializes in character voices and also worked on an animated series for children called Boz The Bear.

Another interesting thing about Wishbone is that even before DVDs with behind-the-scenes bonus features became common, the last two minutes of nearly every Wishbone episode would include a background description such as showing how the stunts were done, how the costumes were made, or how the visual effects were created.

Unfortunately, just like some of my other favorite PBS shows, only a handful of the Wishbone episodes were ever released to VHS and DVD. The Wishbone television series did inspire several book series, though, consisting of more than sixty Wishbone books altogether. We were able to find most of them at Bookman’s. Hopefully this show will also get kids interested in reading the original literary classics upon which Wishbone is based.

The PBS website doesn't have a Wishbone page any more, but Wikipedia has complete list of Wishbone episodes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wishbone_episodes.

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