Introduction

Ebos Adventures is an innovative award winning series that mixes live action video and animation to encourage children to explore the world around them.  Jack, Lily and the Ebos are animated characters that lead children on adventures to familiar, real world locations such as the Firehouse, the Shedd Aquarium and NASA Space Camp answering questions commonly asked by children.  It is not a studio show or a fully animated series that recreates the world.  The Ebos are out into the world and show kids what they want to see.  The animation appeals to children’s desire for imagination and creativity while the live video of real places and people appeals to their desire to explore and learn.  The show is a true answer to questions that real kids have every day.  Each of the concepts, themes and show topics have been created by surveying 200 children and determining what they want to learn.

Birth of a Concept

The Ebos were created by an award winning and Emmy nominated director, Dean Bushala, and an experienced, highly trained school teacher, Jennifer Fishbein.  Being parents of young children they were frustrated by the lack of quality programming for kids on television.  Dean thought it would be exciting to do a documentary series for kids, but something that would involve the kids.  Jennifer started talking about all the questions that her kids have in her classroom.  They thought it would be fantastic and unique to create a type of documentary series while using animated characters to help get the message across, and reinforce many of the basic skills that children are starting to learn in school.

Proof of a Great Concept

Ebos Adventures won 2 Telly Awards in Children’s Educational Programming.  The Telly Awards are the equivalent of the Emmy’s for television, and the Academy Awards for film, but for non-broadcast or cable.  They won all categories entered, for Children’s Programming and Creative New Concepts.  They were encouraged to enter the Telly’s by a producer at 4Kids Entertainment , who said it’s better than most of what he’s seen, and entering would be a great way to see how the show stands and get feedback.  4Kids Entertainment is the premier global provider of children’s entertainment and is devoted to the creation, development, production, broadcasting, distribution, licensing and manufacturing of children’s entertainment products.  The award was given when only the Pilot Episode was created “A Day at the Firehouse”.  Currently a second episode is almost complete “Feeding the Sharks at the Aquarium”.