I am a Sesame Street kid. I grew up watching Big Bird stop to chat outside Mr. Hooper’s store and listening to Maria and Luis and Gordon and Bob and the whole crew of multicultural human and not so human beings sing to me about the alphabet and colors and simple math and being nice and a bunch of other topics. And when I started to travel abroad, after Sesame Street had gone global, I loved to watch in different languages because I could understand. I’ve seen Sesame Street in Hebrew and Portuguese and, most recently, while I was living in Austria, I watched Sesam Strasse in German because I was trying to learn that complicated language. (Plus it was on before Siebenstien, my other favorite kids show in German).

I was psyched to get my paws on a copy of Putumayo’s Sesame Street Playground, a collection of tunes from Sesame Street in a smattering of different languages. There’s a disk with video clips too, so you can see the Sesame Street characters from around the globe. I especially enjoyed seeing the clip from South Africa - the muppets are unmistakable as muppets, but they’re different too and that is good fun.

I always found it unsettling to see Bert and Ernie “dubbed”—but beyond that, it’s hugely entertaining to see what Sesame Street looks like in other places on the planet. And face it, it’s really funny to hear Rubber Duckie—a tune I play on the uke all the time—in Chinese.

Putumayo Kids Presents: Sesame Street Playground is available on Amazon, natch. If you’re stuffing stockings or looking for something for one of those eight crazy gift giving nights, or whatever your seasonal gift giving brings, this could be just the ticket.

Now, listen to Hoots tell it like it is. Put down the ducky if you wanna play the saxophone!