Dear reader:

I am concerned about Lily.

Last month, Sesame Street, the beloved children’s program responsible for lessons on topics such as numbers, letters and rubber duckies, revealed to online viewers one of its cast members, a deep fuchsia plush muppet with long hair named Lily, was dealing with homelessness.

Lily, who is described as about 7 years old, and her family lost their apartment and moved in with Lily’s teacher and friend Miss Sofia.

In several videos, just minutes long, viewers learn Lily misses her old room and is anxious about “staying in all different kinds of places.”

Her friend, Sesame Street superstar Elmo, nods in sympathy and tries the best a child-sized furry red monster can to help by asking Lily to paint a rainbow with him.

“It doesn’t feel like a rainbow kind of day,” Lily replies. Nor a sunny day, sweeping the clouds away, one might suspect.

In media coverage surrounding Lily’s situation, experts expressed hopes Lily’s circumstances would spark conversations among parents and children facing homelessness as well as among parents and children about homelessness.

This, of course, is not the first time media have tackled societal issues.

For example, 1970s prime-time television often is hailed by television scholars as a time when socially conscious programming tackled topics such as divorce, attempted sexual assault, abortion and racism. Some TV fans may recall a young Janet Jackson’s portrayal of Penny, a girl abused by her mother, on the situation comedy “Good Times.” Penny, a child character like Lily, spotlighted a troubling issue.

And this is not Lily’s first time as a muppet with a message.

Lily debuted as a child facing food insecurity, a problem dealt with by children, teens, college students, seniors and others throughout the United States every day.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 40 million people lived in food-insecure households in 2017. The figure is approximately the population of California.

Approximately 554,000 people were homeless in the United States on a given night in 2017, according to the calculations of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report. The figure is just under the population of the city of Albuquerque, N.M., and about four and a half times the population of Allentown.

Part of Lily’s mission at the time of her debut, and now as a child facing homelessness, remains to offer room for teaching, learning and practicing compassion.

Supporting information from the Sesame Street in Communities website, sesamestreetincommunities.org, offers answers for teachers, parents and guardians of children who ask about what homelessness means, how it happens and if it is okay to help and how to do so. Elmo offers help to Lily by remaining her friend, inviting her to join him in activities and treating her no differently than before she lost her home.

In other words, children Lily’s age and the eternally youthful Elmo are taking the high road and modeling mature behavior beyond their years.

Unfortunately, sometimes we must call upon those who come behind us to lead us forward.

April Peterson

editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press