I'm sure almost all of us have read any number of the original Arthur books at one point or another, but has anyone ever read the spin-off book Marc Brown wrote and illustrated about Wilbur Rabbit, and what a typical day on the set of Bionic Bunny was like for him? I remember when I was in Grade 5, we had this monthly ritual thing where we'd do book reports with a partner from a Grade 2 class... similar to those projects Mr. Ratburn's class did with D.W.'s pre-school class, basically, our Grade 2 partners would choose the books, and we fifth graders would basically read the book to them, we'd discuss the book, how we liked it and everything, then basically we did written reports on them. One time, my partner picked the Bionic Bunny book, which was pretty interesting, it also showed his family at the end as well, including his wife, and the many kids they had (hey, they ARE rabbits after all). And yes, there's also a brief point in the book where Wilbur flubs his lines, so they have to cut so he can grab his glasses and re-read his lines to get them right.

Arthur and the gang have been in third grade for sixteen years now, among other things... if there were any differences or advances that could be made, what would you like to see?

Personally, one thing I would like to see is considering D.W. turned five in one episode, and Emily mentioned she'd be going to kindergarten, I'd like to see D.W. actually in kindergarten, if only because I think that would make for some really interesting tension at Lakewood Elementary; just yesterday, the episode "D.W., Dancing Queen" was on, where the preschool class was at Lakewood for the annual third grade/preschool partner project, and we see D.W. go out of her way to embarrass Arthur by mentioning his underwear obsession to her classmates. I can see D.W. doing that very often, just to irritate him, since that's what little sisters are supposed to do... of course, we could also end up with some other interesting scenarios, in the event that say someone is picking on D.W. for whatever reason, and if Arthur sees this, suddenly his big brother instinct kicks in and he tries to get the bully to stop picking on her.

I don't know.

Hubert said, "In all honesty, I'm not entirely sure...I think so for the post part, only because I'm not remembering much in the way of newer "A Word from Us Kids" section."

I remember reading an interesting comment on YouTube once that suggest Elwood City is too far south in the country to receive any snow, suggesting that Elwood City would probably be in the deep south somewhere like Louisiana or Mississippi, considering before it became a town, the era was previously swampy and marshland.

I could see that, but snow during winter is simply a better visual for television... like take that Sesame Street Stays Up Late New Year's Eve special... it's the middle of winter, in New York City, and there's no snow to be seen throughout the special... it seems really odd.

Not to mention, there's also some suggestions that Elwood City would be somewhere in the north, if not even Canada (which makes the excessive snow in the winter episodes more believable). The only evidence that would support Canada is the mail carrier and the mail boxes certainly don't look American, lol.

This has been an interesting issue that comes up quite often within the Arthur fanbase, so we might as well discuss here as well, and get everyone's opinion on it:

So, how do you feel about those talking Pal and Kate episodes? Personally, I can't stand them myself; I've given them a whirl, but I don't know, I just can't sit through one the whole way through. I mean, it's was an interesting concept to play with, we could pretty much tell that even before then, Pal and Kate liked to play with each other, I'm guessing someone decided to see what it was like from their perspective. Still, I'm just not crazy about the episodes. "The Great Sock Mystery" is just about the only one I can tolerate on some level, if only because I like the Stock Market satire, it reminds you that even older kids and adults can watch this show and be entertained by it.

I like it myself... waaay back before Glee killed TV musicals, you kind of had to expect that almost all children's cartoons do at least one musical episode during its run (anyone remember what was originally the second-to-last Dexter's Lab episode where the whole thing played out like an opera?)

My only quibble with it was Brain's music video was really the only one that seemed to have any kind of real effort put into it: both Arthur and Mr. Ratburn's music videos were pretty much clips and flashbacks. 

Now I'm confused, I thought I had heard quite some time ago that they were "promoting" Alex as a character (similar to Fern, George, Jenna, etc over the years), I thought they ended up making him Carl, but I guess not.

So has Alex not been expanded upon then?