The Unseen Photos of Street Gang (Abrams; December 7, 2021; U.S. $40.00; Hardcover) is an exclusive look into previously unpublished photographs from the first season of Sesame Street, featuring interviews with cast and crew. This official tie-in book to the documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street supplements the film's exploration of the origins and legacy of the globally beloved children's series. It is also a tribute to the enduring achievements of an ingenious group of artists, educators, and television pioneers who believed that the values of equality, education, and inclusion should not just be championed but also made available to all---a dream that Sesame Street has carried forward for more than 50 years.
In The Unseen Photos of Street Gang, author and filmmaker Trevor Crafts, who was given unprecedented access to archival footage and photography, presents more than 150 of photographer David Attie's behind-the-scenes images of Jim Henson, Will Lee, Loretta Long, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and dozens of other pioneering puppeteers, animators, actors, and Sesame Street Muppets. Crafts uses Attie's photos to expand upon the film's story of how show creator Joan Ganz Cooney, along with Sesame Workshop co-founder Lloyd Morrisett, director Jon Stone, and Muppet creator Jim Henson, took the values and goals of the civil rights movement and revolutionized children's television.
About the Author and Contributors
Trevor Crafts is an award-winning producer whose works include Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street and Lantern City, based on his own BOOM! Studios comic-book series. He is the CEO of Macrocosm Entertainment and lives in Weston, Connecticut.
David Attie was a highly prolific commercial and fine-art photographer from the late 1950s until his passing in the 1980s. In March 1970, he photographed the very first season of Sesame Street for Amerika, a Russian-language magazine distributed in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Attie's work is in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and is represented by Getty Images and by Keith de Lellis Gallery in New York City.
Eli Attie is an Emmy-winning TV writer and producer whose credits include long stints on The West Wing and House, and more recently, Billions. He previously served as Vice President Al Gore's chief White House and campaign speechwriter through Gore's concession of the 2000 presidential election that he and Gore wrote together.
Michael Davis was a senior editor and family television columnist for TV Guide from 1998 to 2007. A Nieman Fellow, he has also worked for the Baltimore Sun and Chicago Sun-Times. He is the author of Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street (Penguin, 2008).
Sonia Manzano is a mainland Puerto Rican, raised in the Bronx. After starring in Broadway show Godspell she went on to create the role of "Maria" on Sesame Street, for which she received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award in 2016. Scholastic recently announced a four-book deal with Manzano. The first novel, Coming Up Cuban will publish in 2022. Currently she is working on Alma's Way, an animated series with Fred Rogers Productions that will air on PBS. Sonia lives in New York City with her husband.
About the Book
The Unseen Photos of Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street
By Trevor Crafts
Preface by Eli Attie; foreword by Michael Davis; afterword by Sonia Manzano; Photographs by David Attie
Abrams / December 7, 2021
U.S. $40.00 / CAN. $50.00
Hardcover / 176 pages
10 x 9" / 150 black-and-white and color photographs
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5840-9