The Letter People

Card used in a public school classroom that shows an early version of Mr. T "tall teeth" from The Letter People

Elayne Reiss-Weimann and Rita Friedman created the concept of Letter People as teachers in Nanuet, New York. In 1964, first-grade teacher Reiss-Weimann formed the original idea for the Letter People. She had struggled daily to draw the attention of her 24 students (who were typical first-graders, eager and rambunctious) in a distraction-fond hallway classroom at the overcrowded school. Weimann collaborated with an early childhood coordinator, Rita Friedman, to create an educational program that revolved around 26 anthropomorphic characters, each representing a letter of the alphabet, to teach beginning readers how to "decode" or "sound out" the consonants and vowels that form words. They embodied the basic rules of phonics into stories about these make-believe characters called Letter People.

Each letter of the alphabet had a distinct characteristic to help children learn not only the letter but the sound the letter represents in the written word. For example, Mr. M has a Munching Mouth, Mr. N has a Noisy Nose, or Mr. T has Tall Teeth. The characters were painted on large, two-dimensional portrait cards. Each character was given an engaging personality to help the teacher bring her or him alive in the classroom, and each character had a song (or a poem at the time) to help children recall the distinguishing feature and sound. With the help of the Letter People, children remained on-task, learned more quickly, and retained what they learned. From the beginning, the children viewed the Letter People as real people and not just letters of the alphabet, phonics devices, or toys. On one occasion, when the Letter People had to be shipped to another school, the children insisted that holes be placed in the boxes so that the Letter People could breathe as they traveled.[1]

Weimann and Friedman later sold the idea to New Dimensions in Education, Inc. (based in Plainview, New York, and later in Norwalk, Connecticut) which, in turn, copyrighted and published The Letter People educational products in 1968. NDE hired Liz Callen to design the look of the characters in the classroom programs. NDE developed the concept into classroom programs: Alpha One in 1968, and Alpha Time in 1974.

In Alpha Time, the two-dimensional portrait card characters were made into three-dimensional, inflatable, child-sized vinyl characters commonly known as "The Huggables",[2] which were large enough for small children to hug (though there were smaller-sized Huggables as well).[1] Eventually, Alan J. Pratt, Ph.D., a director and vice-president of NDE, Inc. approached KETC-TV, a PBS affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri, about creating a TV series based on the escapades of the Letter People. After five pilot programs were produced, Dr. Pratt approached the Council of Great City Schools (the 20 largest school districts in the US). Eventually, with the cooperation of the superintendents of the Council, NDE, and KETC-TV, a joint venture commenced. The series comprised sixty 15-minute episodes that became extremely popular nationwide with children who were learning to read. To ensure phonetic and linguistic accuracy in the television production process, Ruth Lerner from NDE served as the Editorial Supervisor. Pratt was the Curriculum Consultant for the TV series. Tom McDonough of KETC-TV was the series' writer-director.

The program's basic concept was simple: Each letter of the English alphabet was represented by a unique character with traits derived from itself. The consonants were males (as "the Letter Boys"), and the vowels were females (as "the Letter Girls", whom there could be no word without). Reiss-Weimann, Friedman, and Callen also wrote two series of books about the characters, Fables from the Letter People and Read-to-Me. Each Letter Person also had an accompanying song (available on 8-track cartridge and vinyl record), and inflatable vinyl effigies in two sizes 12 to 14 in (300 to 360 mm) or 30 in (760 mm) a.k.a. "life-size") known as "Huggables". Other merchandise included filmstrips and flash cards. Educators who adopted the program were trained in its implementation, and The Letter People was soon picked up by hundreds of schools across the US.

Abrams and Co. Publishers, Inc. revamped the Letter People program in 1996. However, the original 1968 program still has thousands of adult fans who remember learning how much fun it was learning to read with the help of The Letter People.

While thousands of children were learning about the Letter People in school, thousands of others were being exposed to them through the television series based on the program. The show was produced by PBS member station KETC in St. Louis, Missouri, and the show first went into production in 1972.[3] The show was extremely popular with children, and it quickly spread to other television stations across the country, via syndication, mainly to PBS and educational stations. The television series premiered on March 13, 1974, and ended on February 25, 1976.

The Letter People consists of 60 episodes. In each 15-minute installment, the Letter People (relatively primitive puppets) undertake various adventures in Letter People Land, a dark, featureless place populated by strange people and creatures. Episodes usually focus on introducing new Letter People or new sounds formed by combining two Letter People together (such as /CH/ or /OU/). Other episodes take the Letter People to more exotic (though still featureless) locales such as outer space (eventually, the show would include more standard scenery, like cityscapes, meadows, Miss O's opera house, etc.), while a few highlight the characters' conflicts over various sounds (such as Mr. C fighting Mr. K and Mr. S for his sound). Another common feature of the show is "the Catching Game", a game show hosted by Monty Swell (a character based on Monty Hall) where the Letter People must form words by positioning themselves correctly side-by-side.

In 1990, Abrams & Co. Publishers Inc. of Austin, Texas, bought the rights to The Letter People from the previous owner, Norwalk, Connecticut-based New Dimensions in Education, Inc. At first, the company slightly revised the program considerably, such as adding lowercase letters to the back of each Letter Person (previously they had been placed on each character somewhat randomly), but in 1996, they gave the program a major update, completely redesigning the look of the characters and the associated materials, and also made sweeping changes to over half of the Letter People's genders themselves, most obviously equalizing the proportion of male to female characters (vowels are now distinguished by their ability to light up via "LetterLights," which appear as yellow suns on their right shoulders). The male characters' names changed from "Mister" to "Mr.", and the female characters' names changed from "Miss" to "Ms.". Most of the characters' associated characteristics were changed as well, such as all references to "junk food" being swapped for non-food-related characteristics (Mr. D's "delicious donuts" were exchanged for "dazzling dance", for example) and any Letter Person that Abrams deemed as expressing negative images being changed to be more positive (Mr. H's horrible hair became happy hair instead, Mr. R's Ripping Rubberbands became Rainbow Ribbons, and Mr. X was no longer all wrong and became different). New Letter People storybooks were written with an eye toward teaching conflict resolution and problem-solving skills. They used Alphakid A as their mascot.

The program is divided into three levels with increasing emphasis on phonics: Let's Begin with the Letter People for preschool, Land of the Letter People for kindergarten, and Lives of the Letter People for first grade. The program is currently taught to about 30 million children.

Though the program is generally well-received by educators, some have criticized its strong focus on phonics at the expense of other literacy-building techniques.

In the early 2010s, four new Letter People characters were added to the program in order to teach children Spanish.[4] The four characters are Señorita Ch, Señor Ll, Señorita Ñ and Señor rr.

In May 2019, Abrams & Co. Publishers Inc was acquired by Excelligence Learning Corporation with The Letter People characters which were planned to being incorporated into subsidiary Frog Street Press.[5] As of September 21, 2020, no new Letter People products are being produced, seeming the program appears to have become defunct. However, worksheets and flashcards of the Letter People are still available second-hand through online stores.

Along with the original program of The Letter People, its mathematics-equivalent program The Number People was also created circa 1977.[6] The Number People are referred to as numerical "friends" or "cousins" of the Letter People and were created to help children learn not only about numbers, their sounds and how many there are in each number, but also symbols, mathematics, time, addition, and measurement.[7] They range from numbers 1-9, with odd numbers consisting of males and even numbers consisting of females. Each Number Person carries a number of objects to teach children how many there are to represent the number (such as Mister 1 having "only one of everything: a one-legged table, a one-legged chair, one microscope, one test tube and one clock with one hand"),[6] and also represents the job they employ: Mister 1 as a scientist, Miss 2 as a doctor, Mister 3 as a pilot, Miss 4 as a construction worker, Mister 5 as a sports player (similar to Mister K), Miss 6 as a shape stacker, Mister 7 as an ice cream salesman, Miss 8 as a photographer, and Mister 9 as a magician.

Unlike The Letter People, The Number People was lesser-known and had very little products, including an Alpha Math workbook[6] and a CD containing accompanying songs each Number Person had.[7]

When The Letter People program was revamped in 1996, The Number People program was also revamped along with it, featuring six males (Mr. 0, Mr. 2, Mr. 4, Mr. 5, Mr. 9 and Mr. 10) and five females (Ms. 1, Ms. 3, Ms. 6, Ms. 7, and Ms. 8), with two new numbers 0 and 10 introduced. Each Number Person has the numeral placed to the top-right corner of his/her uniform, while a number word was also added to the back of each Number Person. A Spanish-language version was also available to teach the Spanish names of the numbers.[8]

In the original 1968 program, the place where the Letter People live was originally called "Letter People Land", but when the program was revised in 1990, it was renamed the "Land of the Letter People" in 1991. As the newly revised program in 1996 utilized the newer version of the characters, the Letter People's residence "Land of the Letter People" still remained the same.

• Note: The characteristics of Miss I and Miss O changed after The Letter People television series entered production. Therefore, they are known by the names in parentheses on that program.
• Note: The characteristics of Mr. Q changed from "Quiet Questions" to just "Questions" to teach children that keeping your questions "quiet" will not answer them.

• Excelligence Learning Corporation
• Ashley's Asylum: The Letter People!
• at Bobopolis