Nicole Caccavo Kear

Most parents who grew up watching Sesame Street harbor at least a small soft spot for puppets. Mine happens to be extra cushy: I can't get enough of the strung-up dudes. And neither can my four-year-old son, Giovanni, who often spends his days transforming old socks into players for his shows. Thinking my budding puppeteer might benefit from a little inspiration, I took him to see productions at three children's companies. Each one, surprisingly, delivered a truly unique experience. Puppetworks At this retro storefront theater in Park Slope, kids sit cross-legged on a mat facing the stage while grown-ups hunker down on bleachers behind them. Intricate marionettes hang along the wall—a formation the puppeteers refer to as "a long unemployment line." The figures are also a preshow conversation-starter for the pip-squeaks ("There's Cinderella! I saw that show. Did you?"). Almost all 45 minutes of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp riveted Giovanni, except for the yawn-inducing romantic scenes. He especially liked seeing a gargantuan-seeming actor play the genie. As for me, I loved that the prerecorded soundtrack was taken from the Russian ballet Gayane. How often does my son get to hear Aram Khachaturian suites?Giovanni's verdict: "This show is funny for kids, but babies might think the puppets are real." Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp plays through Aug 23. Teatro SEA Musicians and singers perform alongside hand, rod, shadow and Japanese Bunraku-style puppets (this month's productio

When I was pregnant and rifling through a box of childhood treasures, my heart skipped a beat as I spotted The Monster at the End of This Book. Oh, lovable, furry old Grover, you had me at “Do not turn another page!” These days, it’s my three-year-old who’s obsessed, and she has me chain-read the book to her so much that I almost regret unearthing it. Monster is Sesame Street's best-selling book of all time, out of some 2,000 story-, novelty-, board- and activity-book titles. Though most people think of the stuffed animals and Tickle Me toys, books are a big part of the Sesame franchise. In fact, they were the first products to be licensed by the show, arriving the year after Sesame Street’s debut in November 1969. Do the math and you’ll find that this month, Sesame Street turns 40. A new book, Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life on the Street (Black Dog & Leventhal, $40), features prominently in an upcoming exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Library. The exhibit showcases Sesame scripts, photographs and original artwork spanning all four decades. But the real draw will be the Muppets—Grover, Prairie Dawn and Slimy, plus a host of other characters on loan from the Jim Henson Company and the Jim Henson Legacy. When the exhibit opens this month, Sesame star Elmo will be making the rounds, celebrating the launch of BPL’s limited-edition Elmo library card, a bid to attract new cardholders. Why not an Ernie or Cookie Monster card, you wonder? Besides his