Thinking It Through: The Real-Life Inspiration Behind “Alma’s Way”

Inspired by her childhood growing up in the Bronx — and her decades of experience playing “Maria” on “Sesame Street” — Sonia Manzano has created “Alma’s Way,” a vibrant new animated series that gives children the power to find answers to their problems, express their feelings, and respect the unique perspectives of others.

“Creativity always starts from a personal place,” she said. “So I went back to my own childhood, where I found refuge in my own head.”

Alma Rivera — a proud and confident Bronx-born, Puerto Rican girl inspired by Manzano — is determined to figure things out for herself. In every episode, the 6-year-old reaches a point where she’s not sure what to do next — and must stop, think, and process in her signature “Think Throughs.”

Manzano, a 15-time Emmy® Award winner, joined forces with PBS KIDS and Fred Rogers Productions to develop an immersive world where Alma lives with her parents and younger brother, Junior, as well as a diverse group of loving family, friends, and neighbors.

She said her biggest hope as she introduces Alma and her community to the next generation is “that they see themselves in our society in a way that, as a child, I never could.”

“If you don’t see yourself reflected in society, you start to think you don’t exist. That’s what I used to think, but I couldn’t articulate it. I used to wonder why I never saw anybody who looked like me or lived in a place like me.”

The real-life settings in "Alma’s Way" reflect the joy of living in a tight-knit community in the Bronx.

“I want people to know there’s joy everywhere in the Bronx,” Manzano said. “We often hear about the Bronx being a troubled place, a place where bad things happen. People get the idea that there’s no joy in it, there’s no happiness there. But if kids live there, there is happiness. Kids have that capacity to find joy and be interested in the things around them.”

Setting the scene in the Bronx — not a fictional location — is a way of honoring the neighborhood, and a source of pride for Manzano.

“We pay tribute to the Bronx being a real place,” Manzano said. In fact, Fred Rogers Productions got permission from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to feature the Number 6 train running through Alma’s neighborhood, another nod to Manzano’s childhood.

“I got on the Number 6 train to go to school, it’s a real icon,” she said. In the show, the train helps move the story forward when Alma thinks about the problem she’s encountering.

“A lot of heart goes into it,” Manzano said of setting the scenes and creating the charming characters in Alma’s world. She has poured so much heart into developing the show, that Manzano’s family and friends inspired many of the characters in the fictional Rivera family.

Eddie Mambo, who is Alma’s “primo-amigo” (cousin-friend), is inspired by her real-life cousin Eddie. In the show, Eddie Mambo has cerebral palsy, so he wears braces on his legs and uses crutches to walk long distances. He’s also known for his incredible dance moves, much like Manzano’s childhood friend who had polio — and loved to dance.

Manzano says it’s important to her for “Alma’s Way” to “be funny with sincere characters” — something she took away from her 44 years on “Sesame Street.”

Her favorite episode is when Alma’s brother Junior loses a tooth, because the whole family pulls together to find the missing tooth. It’s sweet, relatable, and, to Manzano’s delight, funny. Manzano even voices Alma’s quick-witted Granny Isa, who has a passion for dance and an impeccable sense of humor.

“The whole family gets in on the act of finding the lost tooth,” Manzano said. “Everybody is concerned, everybody wants to help him feel better. The family is crawling around on the floor and finding all sorts of things, but not the tooth.”

Alma’s mother, who she calls Mami, teaches music at home and can hear a tune in anything, from the sound of dripping water in the kitchen sink to the noise of car horns outside. She’s always singing. And she reflects Manzano’s family, too.

“The mother in Alma’s world is a music teacher with music always at the ready, which was my family as well,” Manzano said. “I like that the family is very involved in everything going on in Alma’s life. I wanted to show parents with their own sensibility and loves and dislikes as real people.”

Latino music is infused throughout Alma’s neighborhood, along with hip-hop, pop, and rap.

“Kids can tell when something is good music,” Manzano said. She said watching cartoons with classical music was an open door into new worlds of music for her as a child.

On the show, kids will hear traditional Puerto Rican music styles like Plena, Bomba, and salsa — along with other Latino genres such as Cuban son and Colombian cumbia.

“It was very important to me to have real music on the show,” Manzano said. “I’m very particular about the music. Coming from a show like ‘Sesame Street’ that had such wonderful music and stars singing, I wanted the music to be real. All of the music cues on the show are real and all Latin-infused.”

The original theme song was written and produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bill Sherman.

“I met Lin Manuel Miranda on ‘Sesame Street.’ He had been on our show a few times, and he seemed like the perfect one to set up the show in two minutes,” Manzano said. “Bill Sherman did the music and did a lot of work with ‘In the Heights’ as well. He did a great job blending styles and coming up with a cohesive mix of music.”

The theme song is performed by Flaco Navaja — a Bronx-born salsa singer — and Summer Rose Castillo, who plays Alma.

“[Summer is] charming and lovely and said, ‘Didn’t I see you with Elmo once?’” Manzano laughed.

Manzano said she hopes Alma’s “Think-Through” moments — where she stops, listens, and processes in the face of a tough decision — encourage kids everywhere to embrace their ability to think things out.

“I’m suggesting that kids practice thinking for themselves. Without these tools, they won’t be able to navigate our ever-changing world,” Manzano said.

She recalled a time when she was visiting schools across the country, and a concerned mother asked for help in getting her child interested in learning.

“She said to me, ‘Can you help me help my kid like school?’ And I thought, ‘What could they not like?’ But her child thought thinking was memorizing and regurgitating information and was turned off to the joys of thinking. I want kids to know they have a mind. They can take refuge in it, and it’s a place to have fun.”

Manzano hopes that after watching Alma share her observations and feelings, kids can come to believe that they can trust their instincts.

“I hope that they trust themselves,” she said. “I hope they maintain Alma’s way.”

Fred Rogers Productions' “Alma's Way” is an animated series about a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx and her family. It’s created by Sonia Manzano for PBS KIDS.