It’s hard to believe but Sesame Street was born 40 years ago to this day. The show was originally conceived in 1969 to teach less advantaged children, through the means of television, so that they would arrive in school with the same preparation as middle-class children.

The show’s 40th season also starts today featuring new title and end sequences, First Lady Michelle Obama and its very first CG-animated block, Abby’s Flying Fairy School.

To celebrate, Google has shown a whole bunch of Sesame Street-inspired logos throughout the last week. They have them collected in higher resolution on their website, including all the localised ones that you may not have seen in your country, along with a “behind the scenes” look at the making of the final day’s logo, below.

Here’s some more to feed your Sesame Street fix:
Why did Britain fall out of love with Sesame Street?
TIME Magazine: Sesame Street’s 40-Year Cavalcade of Stars gallery
Feist’s performance on Sesame Street
Ricky Gervais and Elmo
Sesame Street Classic songs playlist

With the Spike Jonze-directed movie forthcoming, illustrator Cory Godbey has started an awesome project, Terrible Yellow Eyes, to celebrate Maurice Sendak’s illustrated children’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are. He’s invited numerous talented artists to contribute their own works, inspired by the book itself.

Over the coming weeks and months I’ll display a growing collection of works created by invited contributing artists and myself. We share a love and admiration for Sendak’s work and the pieces we present here are done as a tribute to his life and legacy.

Simply put, like a visual love letter to the book, with Terrible Yellow Eyes I am seeking to celebrate and promote the original masterwork by Maurice Sendak in the best way I know how — with pictures.

I was going to write a list of my personal favourites from the collection but there are simply too many to mention!

Maurice Sendak celebrated his 81st birthday on Wednesday. Happy birthday Maurice!

(discovered via Ward, who’s contributed this lovely illustration to the project)

Update: Lindsey just drew my attention to the We Love You So blog. It’s a diary of multitude of stuff that has inspired the making of the film adaptation by the film crew themselves.

Update Sept 3rd 2009: Terrible Yellow Eyes will now be running as an exhibition at the Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California between September 19th and October 6th, 2009.

I originally discovered Joey’s work through The Disney Blog who highlighted the superb Disney-themed avatars that he uses as his Twitter profile pics. From there I discovered the fantastic Mickey Mouse mural he designed and painted onto his son’s room.

He’s also used his talents for some incredibly good deeds too. He’s set up Cory Fights Giants to help raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Check out his latest work on his blog and on his Flickr stream.

Check out this wonderful blog entitled Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves of “vintage children’s books from thrift shops, library sales, book stores, online and elsewhere”. Image from Gyo Fujikawa‘s exquisite Lets Grow a Garden.

Incidentally, if you like Gyo Fujikawa, there’s a ton more images of her work on Flickr.

“Artoo and the shiny guy.”

“Obeekenobee sometimes moves things around. Sometimes he disappears.”

I think becoming a parent has made me go soft… but isn’t this adorable? (via Geek Parenting)

In what may be considered by some to be an incredibly extreme attempt to copy Boing Boing, I have the utmost pleasure in announcing the birth of Milo Jefferson May. He arrived after an extended labour (that I will not go into detail of for fear of digging up already buried memories of a delivery bed that transformed into what can only be described as a futuristic torture device, ventouse caps and blood, lots of blood) at 1:59pm today, weighing in at 7lb 14oz.

Both Cassie and Milo are now doing well.

I’m off to bed to enjoy my last uninterrupted nights sleep… ever!

With a slight danger of AKD becoming a YouTube video dumping ground, here’s a clip of Cornelius performing Count Five or Six live on hipster kids TV show Yo Gabba Gabba.

There’s a higher quality version of the video over at Jezebel.

I rather like the beginnings of a children’s Rhyme Book by Canadian illustrator/designer Chad Geran. He hasn’t got a publisher yet but, inspired by Steve Mack, he’s creating a new book spread every week or so on his blog. Go take a look and, if you’re a publisher, make him an offer! (via Drawn!)