Alison Van Ginkel
Alison Van Ginkel works as a Sales and Rights Account Manager at Kids Can Press, a children’s book publisher based in Toronto.
Bio last updated August 10th, 2018.
Articles by Alison Van Ginkel
Won't You Be My Neighbour?
By Alison Van Ginkel
August 3, 2018
By the end of a new documentary on children’s TV pioneer Fred Rogers, Alison Van Ginkel isn’t sure the film resolves the paradox it creates about the man who was Mister Rogers. What it does reveal to her is a man wholly suffused by faith, hope and love.
As the show progressed, Daniel (voiced by Rogers, as all the show’s puppets were) became the voice of Rogers’ inner doubts and fears and insecurities One summer when the news was full of African Americans being harassed and kicked out of swimming pools, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood aired a segment in which Rogers, casually wading in an inflatable pool on set, is joined by Officer Clemmons, the friendly neighborhood policeman and frequent guest on the show The relatively early success of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood after it first hit the airwaves in 1968, was largely due to Rogers’ ability to authentically remember what it’s like to be six years old