Trivia / Adventures from the Book of Virtues

aka: Book Of Virtues

• Adored by the Network: Well, this was a Cash-Cow Franchise for PorchLight Entertainment.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: The most successful work of PorchLight Entertainment.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The story segments have a lot of them, making the show a big case of "Sesame Street" Cred.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A Qubo promo for the series calls Sock a tiger, even though he's actually a bobcat.
• Creator Breakdown: The plotline of the "Courage" episode (see Real Life Writes the Plot below).
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Zach in the first two seasons. For the rest of the series starting with season two's second half, he was voiced by a boy.
• Doing It for the Art: Despite having the series air on PBS prime time, series conceiver William Bennett had a strong hatred towards PBS because he felt the network raises money from the government. This is apparently the main reason why he decided the series won't be funded through federal money, but instead it will be funded through sales of an interactive CD-ROM series, home videos, and a series of books.
• Dueling Dubs: There are two different English dubs. One was made in the 90s with celebrity stars from Hollywood (later on with Vancouver talent). In the 2000s, Singapore redubbed the show with local English-speaking actors. The Singaporean version is more widely available than original, and was made to avoid paying royalties to the celebrity voice actors from S1-2 (The later seasons are not redubbed. Again, they feature Vancouver actors and not celebrities).
• Dueling Shows: With Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, another show which told famous stories with Celebrity Voice Actors.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: In the 2000s, the first 26 episodes were redubbed in Singapore with local English speaking actors. According to Chuck Powers (who did additional voices in the Singapore-dubbed versions), the reason the redubs were made is because it was too expensive to keep paying royalties to the celebrity voices. These are the versions available on DVD, qubo, and BYUtv. Because TV reruns and DVDs of the series are nothing more than the Singapore dubbed versions, the original PBS versions are easier to find on either official VHS releases by PBS Home Video and later Chick-Fil-A or tape recordings of the old airings. The official KidMango/YouTube versions of season 1 had the original voices, but KidMango has since blocked them, and "Loyalty" was never uploaded. Season 2 is even harder to find, because the VHS tapes were only available to schools, libraries, churches and other institutions, and fewer and fewer of these still have VHS. (Season 3 was never redubbed, because the voices were done in Vancouver, not Hollywood, so there's no celebrity VAs to pay royalties to.)
• Kids' Meal Toy:
  • Wendy's had a set of five toys in 1998. These consisted of the Aristotle maze game, the Plato coin holder, the Aristotle slide viewer, the color surprise poster, and a puzzle.
  • Chick-Fil-A had a series of children's books. Among them were The Bear and the Travelers: A Story of Trust, The Tortoise and the Hare: A Story of Perseverance, and Zach and the Beanstalk: A Story of Courage.
• Network to the Rescue: The show was saved by Bruce D. Johnson and backed through his startup production company, PorchLight Entertainment, because he loved the original book.
• The Other Darrin: Everybody was entirely recast in season three after the series returned from its two-year hiatus, with the voices being done in Vancouver instead of Hollywood. For example, in the first two seasons, Zach was voiced by Pamela Adlon, but in the third season, he was voiced by Andrew Francis.
• Recursive Adaptation: The series has spawned several paperback picture books when it first aired... while being based on a moral-focused anthology.
• Same Language Dub: In the 2000s the first two seasons were redubbed in Singapore (because it was too expensive to keep paying royalties to the celebrities), giving us a whole new set of voices. Averted with the third season since the voice work moved to Vancouver.
• Similarly Named Works: Most of the episodes in the third and fourth seasons have the same titles as the ones from the first two seasons.
• Write What You Know: The reason Plato is a bison is because of Bennett's nickname, "Buffalo Bill".

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