WGBH Boston, Studio B Productions Ink Co-production Deal for New Animated Series

BOSTON/VANCOUVER, June 4: WGBH
Boston has teamed up with Canadian animation company Studio B Productions Inc.,
to develop and co-produce a new animated series for public television that is based
on the award-winning Martha Speaks
children’s book series by Susan Meddaugh.

The television series,
consisting of 40 half-hour episodes, is scheduled to premiere in fall of 2008.
Studio B will hold international distribution rights for the property. Martha
Speaks will be executive produced
by Carol Greenwald, who is currently the executive producer of Curious
George and Postcards from
Buster, the spin-off from the Emmy
and Peabody Award-winning series, Arthur, for which she was executive producer for eight years.

Martha Speaks is designed to enrich children’s vocabulary in the
context of compelling stories, and will center on a loveable dog named Martha
whose appetite for alphabet soup gives her the gift of human speech. Using her
speaking abilities, Martha gets jobs, foils bad guys, wins contests, and orders
lots of steaks. Martha Speaks
will build upon Martha’s love of words—as well as the latest research on
literacy, vocabulary acquisition, and child development. The Martha Speaks book series was first published by Houghton
Mifflin in 1992 and has more than 1 million copies in print. The series has
garnered numerous awards, including New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, IRA-CBC
Children’s Choice, Parent’s Choice
Award and was selected as best book of the year by the American Library
Association’s Booklist, Parent’s Magazine, The Horn Book Magazine and The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s
Books.

“Martha Speaks is a charming series of books, engaging kids and
parents with humour, imagination and fun!” stats Chris Bartleman, a partner in
Studio B Productions. “With a combination of delightful characters, hilarious
entanglements and comic storytelling, we are confident that Martha Speaks will be a wonderful animated series for audiences.
We are thrilled to be partnering with WGBH to bring such a unique
property to public television”.