One World, One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure

From Muppet Wiki

Small inflated planetarium that comes to schools

One World, One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure is a planetarium show developed for the United States and China. Designed as an introduction to astronomy for children, Big Bird, Elmo and Hu Hu Zhu embark on a journey through space to learn about the sun, stars and constellations. On an imaginary trip to the Moon, the trio discover how different it is from Earth. They learn how to find the Big Dipper constellation and the North Star, and there's a sing-along of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". ^[1]

Sesame Workshop CEO Gary Knell says that the show is an advance for educating young children about space: "There's just not a lot of other programs out there that engage little kids without scaring them half to death in a dark room... This will give them an introduction and hopefully instill in them at a very young age a love for science." ^[1]

In addition to teaching about outer space, the project's goals also include a focus on cross-cultural appreciation. In the U.S. version of the show, Hu Hu Zhu visits Elmo in the United States; in the Chinese version, Elmo visits Hu Hu Zhu in China. (The U.S. version has an English and Spanish soundtrack; the Chinese version is in Mandarin.)

The film premiered at the Beijing Planetarium on September 26, 2008, while the U.S. version opened on October 17, 2008 at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. The New Jersey's Liberty Science Center began running it in late-2008 or early-2009. The show opened at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. on April 21, 2009. ^[1]