Caillou

Caillou is a Canadian educational children tv series that was first shown on Teletoon,with its first episode airing on the former channel on September 1997. The show was later moved on Treehouse. The series is based on the books by Hélène Desputeaux,centers around a 4 year old boy named Caillou who is fascinated by the world around him.

Caillou lives with his mother,father and younger sister Rosie. He has many adventures with his family and friends,and uses his imagination in every episode. Each episode in Seasons 1–3 has a theme and is divided into several short sections that mix animation,puppet skits and video of children in real-life situations. During the first season,many of the stories in the animated version began with a grandmother (who is also the show's narrator) introducing the story to her grandchildren,then reading the story from a book. Since the second season,the narrator/grandmother is an unseen character.

### **Controversy:**

*Caillou* was designed primarily for toddlers. It was created by child developmental psychologists. On April 3rd 2006,a new set of 20 episodes finally premiered after a three-year hiatus. Caillou started attending preschool and there were new themes and a new opening. In a May 2017 article from the *National Post,*writer Tristin Hopper identified *Caillou* to be "quite possibly the world's most universally reviled children's program,"noting "a stunning level of animosity for a series about the relatively uncontroversial daily life of a four-year-old boy.  Examples include several "I hate Caillou" pages made on Facebook,posts saying that Caillou is a ripoff of Charlie Brown,numerous parenting blogs criticizing the series and petitions on Change.org for the show to stop airing. A common criticism towards the series is the "petulant,manipulative and spoiled" behaviour of the titular character,the lack of consequences Caillou is given and the "poor parenting" presented in the parent characters. As Hopper explained,"This has understandably led to theories that this is an accurate portrayal of Canadian parenting and that Canada is raising a generation of psychopaths. Or that Caillou's parents are so blasted on Canadian weed that they are unable to summon the presence of mind necessary to properly discipline their child." He called the series "a toddler version of *Sex and the City* or *Mad Men*,"criticizing its lack of educational value: "Unlike most children's programming,*Caillou* makes almost no attempt to educate its young audience. There are no veiled math problems,spelling lessons or morality tales; it's just calm,non-threatening,bright-coloured people navigating everyday tasks." As Caillou appeared as a much younger child in the original line of children's books, he originally had no hair.

### **Trivia:**

* When illustrators found that adding hair made him look unrecognizable,it was decided that Caillou would never have hair.

## **Broadcast:**

The series premiered on both Teletoon and its French counterpart when the channel first launched in 1997. It was the first series to ever air on the channel. Caillou no longer airs on the channel as of 2010 and has ever since moved to Treehouse and PBS Kids. On January 5th 2021,PBS Kids on Twitter announced the series will no longer airs on TV.