With songs about being eaten alive and choking to death on chicken bones, Really Rosie is the kind of flippant, oddball children’s entertainment that today’s squeaky clean High School Musical-fed generation is sorely lacking. Directed by the artist himself, 1975’s Really Rosie is an animated TV special based on Maurice Sendak’s children’s books, with musical accompaniment by Carole King. The story takes place on Avenue P in Brooklyn, centering around a motley crew of kids including an alligator, an adorably apathetic brat named Pierre, and Rosie herself– an egocentric older girl whose furry beard-like boa sometimes gives her the appearance of a lazy drag queen. Check out the song “One Was Johnny” from Really Rosie, below. It’s the story of the world’s cutest misanthrope, and it teaches the numbers 1 through 10 while subversively advising kids that it’s okay to be an introverted loner!
The sounds is a bit off on this clip, but the entire 30-minute production without glitches is available on YouTube.
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I have equally fond and terrifying childhood memories of this video, which, I hope, is how kids who go see WTWTA will look back on it as adults…
Our local library had Really Rosie (books and audio tapes) in a ziplock bag that could be checked out from the children’s counter. My brother and I checked it out with regularity and that is why today we could both sing to you about a boy named Pierre, and another boy named Chicken Soup.
I love Really Rosie. It is what my childhood was made of.