"We are much more a mosaic." Through characters like Maya's friends - Maggie, who speaks Mandarin as well as English, and Chrissy, who is black and Hispanic - the show celebrates the obvious markings of culture, like food, music and language, along with more subtle ones, like behavior and values. Forte said, are to promote the value of a culturally diverse society among all children ages 6 to 11, and to support English-language acquisition and usage among Latino children. "Maya and Miguel" was partly financed by a $9.2 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (its largest award for a children's multimedia initiative) and by $5 million from the United States Department of Education via PBS. She always manages to include her twin brother and. "With the shift in population we felt a need to appreciate and understand diversity and multiculturalism," said Deborah Forte, president of Scholastic Entertainment, which produces the show. Maya Santos (voiced by Candi Milo) is a sweet, gentle, and energetic Mexican, Hispanic and Puerto Rican girl.
According to the Census Bureau,ġ8 percent of those between 3 and 12, are Hispanic. "Maya and Miguel" addresses a new demographic: Hispanics have surpassed blacks as the largest minority group in the United States. It joins just a handful of children's shows that feature Hispanics as lead characters, including the animated "Dora the Explorer" and the live-action "Brothers Garcia" and "Taina," all on Nickelodeon. The half-hour show runs Mondays through Fridays at 4:30 p.m. (He's not shy about commenting on the escapades of Maya and her friends.) Their mother (Elizabeth Peña) is from Mexico, their father (Carlos Ponce) from Puerto Rico, and like everyone else in the family, their pet parrot, Paco (Carlos Alazraqui), is bilingual. Maya and Miguel Santos live in an unspecified American city, where their family owns a pet store. It is usually up to her more levelheaded twin brother, Miguel (Nika Futterman), to be the cooling sour cream to her tangy salsa. As she puts it in one episode: "I need a plan. 11, Maya (with the voice of Candi Milo) is bursting with altruistic but cockamamie ideas: redecorating her family's apartment using feng shui to bring good luck to her father, for instance, or finding a date for her widowed grandmother. In "Maya and Miguel," the animated sitcom that had its PBS premiere on Oct.
Consider that fair warning: if this 10-year-old has a brainstorm, a chaotic whirlwind will follow. WHEN Maya gets a bright idea, the pink baubles that cinch her hair start to blink, her ponytail swishes upward and she shouts "¡Eso es!" ("That's it!").
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