Lively, thoughtful 6-year-old hero at center of ‘Alma’s Way’
Alma has a dilemma: The 6-year-old New Yorker has tickets for a baseball game on Saturday with her grandfather, but she told her uncle she’d help him with a dance recital that day.
“I promised I’d help him. I made a commitment,” she says, taking a moment to think about her choices. “OK, I know what to do.” She breaks the news to her grandfather — a promise is a promise. “I completely understand,” he tells her. “It’s good to honor your commitments.”
Alma is the lively, thoughtful hero of “Alma’s Way,” a new animated PBS Kids series set in the city’s melting pot Bronx borough and featuring a Puerto Rican and biracial extended family.
The Fred Rogers Productions series that recently debuted has some starry creators. It was sparked and produced by Sonia Manzano, who played Maria and won 15 Emmys as a writer on “Sesame Street.” And “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda helped supply the theme song.
“The main overriding hope is that I want kids to understand that everybody has a brain, and they can use their brains, and they can think. It’s as simple as that,” says Manzano.
Designed for children ages 4 to 6, each 11-minute episode tries to help kids find their own answers to problems, express what they think and feel and recognize and respect the unique perspective of others.
“Alma’s Way” isn’t just set in the Bronx, it’s grounded in it, with authentic-looking houses, multicultural residents, elevated train tracks and
honking cars.
“I think that more specificity just leads to more relatability because the more real, the more true the characters feel, the more interesting it is,” says Ellen Doherty, executive producer and chief creative officer of Fred Rogers Productions.
Manzano, who also voices the grandmother, wanted it to look like the neighborhood she knew so well and the people with which she grew up. She considered every detail — even Alma’s nose.
“I didn’t want (it) to be perky and turned up, I wanted (it) to be round, I wanted to have a little Afro-Puerto Rican in her,” she says. “I think this is the first time that I have seen a Hispanic character that has an Afro-Puerto Rican vibe to her.”
Her voice is supplied by Summer Rose Castillo, 9, the daughter of April Hernandez Castillo, an actor with roles in TV shows such as “Dexter,” “ER” and “Law & Order.”
Summer Rose recorded her vocal parts in a home studio built by her dad. They live, appropriately, in the Bronx.
“It’s really important for people to look at ‘Alma’s
Way’ and feel like there’s a mirror and Alma looks exactly like them,” Summer Rose says.
There is music throughout — salsa, plena and bomba, along with other Latin genres such as Cuban son and Colombian cumbia. Miranda was tasked with writing the theme song with Bill Sherman, and they came up with a delightful mashup of Latin music, hip-hop and rap.
In the episodes, Alma often witnesses adults deal with an issue — a mom telling her partner that an item of clothing is too small — and then she applies it to her own life after thinking it over. Or she identifies a problem and works through it.
Doherty says the show is designed to help kids who are transiting from nursery school to kindergarten or first grade, the times when they are unmoored by their routines.
“There are a lot more moments during the day when they have to figure stuff out, when there may not be an adult as present as they were when they were younger. And in those moments, we want to help them think through what what’s going on,” she says.