city island

CITY ISLAND, a new series of animated digital shorts for early elementary school-aged children, will be coming to audiences across Georgia starting December 26, 2022 on PBS KIDS. The new shorts will feature a civics curriculum, highlighting topics like cooperation, conflict resolution, and city planning, helping to foster young viewers’ understanding of how cities and communities work. 

Set in City Island, a thriving metropolis with local organizations, government institutions, and a diverse citizenry, every car, tree, and building is a fun character with its own name, voice, and distinctive personality. The introduction of CITY ISLAND will add to PBS KIDS’ expanding roster of engaging and educational short-form content that aims to support and teach children key concepts anywhere, anytime.

The shorts star Watt, a little lightbulb with big ideas. In each episode Watt meets all the cheerfully optimistic members of the community and learns about how they make the city run, exploring different locations like the library, airport, planetarium, art museum and more, all while working together to find the best solutions to simple problems. CITY ISLAND is a living city where the infrastructure and town objects are all characters and members of the community – from fire trucks and mail carriers to cafes, plants, bicycles, and even the roads themselves. Watt’s best friend is Windy, a flying kite who lives in the floating City Island neighborhood of Skytown, and matches his thirst for exploration and adventure. In addition to civics, the series also touches on a social studies curriculum, including geography and economics. The new CITY ISLAND shorts highlight the benefits of a community that works together and shows that great ideas are one of our most precious resources. 

The series of shorts, produced with major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), will include 20 three-minute episodes. The first ten will stream free on PBS KIDS beginning December 26, with the remaining ten debuting on January 20, 2023.