Sesame Street Goes to Prison: Series Tackles What to Do When Your Parents Are Incarcerated

Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration includes music, animation and storybooks

Sesame Street meets The Wire?

The children's show's lesson plans have always covered a vast array of topics, like art and dancing. And now, what to do when one of your parents is in prison.

Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration is a new series, billed as "a bilingual multimedia initiative," that's meant to assist children whose parents are in the Big House.

And yes, there's a musical number.

The initiative also includes a storybook about a muppet who brings her uncle to Family Fun Night, because, as she explains, "I miss my daddy. He's in prison, so he can't be here." She ends up drawing him a picture...to hang in his prison cell.

It's apparently not as niche an audience as you would think. And the intention is quite admirable. But here's our sticking point: Why prison? There's a difference between just jail and prison. Now, all we can think while watching is, "What did the parents of these muppets do?! Money laundering? Robbery? Muppet murder?!"

For the record, the series does not feature "Evil Elmo," the allegedly Girl Scouts-extorting, anti-Semitic, misogynistic muppet impersonator who was arrested in New York City earlier this month.