”Super Readers...to the rescue!”note
"Hi! So glad you're here! It's me, Whyatt!'
Welcome to Storybrook Village, where all our fairytale friends live!"
—Whyatt
Super Why! is a Canadian-American educational animated children's show aimed at preschool aged children. It features Fairy Tale characters who turn into superheroes known as the "Super Readers", who can literally enter into books to help solve problems. They are:
- Littlest Pig, of The Three Little Pigs, who transforms into Alpha Pig, "with Alphabet Power!"
- Little Red Riding Hood, who turns into Wonder Red, "with Word Power!"
- Princess Pea, daughter of the Princess from The Princess and the Pea who turns into Princess Presto, "with Spelling Power!"
- Whyatt, younger brother of Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, who transforms into Super Why! "with the Power to Read!"
- Puppy, the pet of Whyatt, transforms into Woofster "with Dictionary Power!"
The show is produced by Decode Entertainment (later DHX Media) and 9 Story Media Group's New York-based Out of the Blue Enterprises. It features many of the same people who made Blue's Clues on production, being the creation of one of that show's co-creators Angela C. Santomero. Episodes can be seen on PBS Kids in the United States and CBC Kids in Canada.
The series is highly formulaic, following the same pattern in virtually every episode: One of the main characters has a problem, and the group sets out to find a solution to it by changing into their heroic selves and entering a book. There they try to help the story's characters with their problems, eventually changing the story (by replacing/swapping words in the text) to give it a different ending. In the process, they find special "super letters" that Super Why collects in his "super duper computer" which eventually spell out a word that is the solution to the original problem. After that too is resolved, the Super Readers, now back in their normal forms, dance a little victory dance to the show's Ending Theme, and the episode ends.
It should be noted that not all the books the kids enter are the typical fairy tales most children know; some are from other countries (such as the Japanese fairy tale of Momotarō, the Peach Boy), others are folk tales instead (such as Juan Bobo and the Pig, a Puerto Rican folk tale) and some are modern books such as Doctor Dolittle. The stories are usually changed to make them simpler and safer for a very young audience. While the Super Readers are animated in 3D, the storybook characters are all two-dimensional, resembling the type of pictures you see in such books.
In September 2023, a series of 2D animated shorts entitled Super Why's Comic Book Adventures was announced
, serving as a revival of sorts. The series sees the Super Readers - with the conspicuous exception of Alpha Pig - jump into comic books to stop "literacy villains." Super Why, Wonder Red, and Princess Presto in this series are joined by Power Paige, who uses a pencil to write and erase words, letters and punctuation. Like the TV show, it aims to teach early literacy skills to small children. It premiered on October 18.
Do not confuse with Big "WHY?!".
See Protegent for the lousy recolor.
"Presto! We're in the "Trope Examples" book!":
- Adaptational Heroism: As depicted in the episode "The Nutcracker", the Mouse King is just a jerk at worst, with the explanation being a cheese shortage that had taken its toll on his mood. When in a better mood, he proves to be quite personable.
- Affectionate Nickname: Whyatt's siblings and friends (in later seasons) often call him "Why". Joy also calls him "Why-why" in later seasons.
- Alphabet Song: The show features a version of the alphabet song sung by Alpha Pig with a different melody than the traditional version. It merely goes through the alphabet before ending with the lyric "Sing with me."
- Amazing Technicolor World: The world of Beauty and the Beast is purple for some reason.
- Anatomy Anomaly: The blue-skinned witch from the "Hansel and Gretel" story has a nose that looks awfully like an elephant's trunk.
- Art Evolution: The Super Readers look distinctly different after the show was renewed for a third season.
- Artistic License – History: In "Galileo's Space Adventure", Galileo is portrayed as a modern day astronaut with dark skin who lives in outer space with a cat. In real life, Galileo Galilei was an Italian 16th century astronomer. Imagine the rage of astronomy geeks everywhere.
- Artistic License – Linguistics: In the "More Man" episode, they get "fewer balloons" grammatically right the first time...and then they shortly proceed to ruin it by saying "less balloons", "less puddles", and "less caps" anyway.
- Art Shift: When entering the books. Note that the Super Readers remain 3D characters while everybody else is flat.
- Art-Shifted Sequel: While the original TV series was animated in CGI, Comic Book Adventures is animated in 2D.
- Because Destiny Says So: Pinocchio uses this as an excuse for continuing to lie before Whyatt zaps a word into his story.
- Be Yourself: The moral of "Cinderella", where Red is invited to a party hosted by Sleeping Beauty, but worries that she won't fit in.
- Birthday Episode: Whyatt has one in "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". In the episode, his family is being sneaky and he doesn’t know why. However, it turns out that they are just preparing a surprise birthday party for him.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Woofster (golden retriever), Whyatt/Princess Pea (brunette), and Red (though it's debatable whether her hair is red or brunette).
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Constantly. A pretty funny example pops up in "Little Red Riding Hood", where Wonder Red shoots the camera a "who is believing this?" look. Despite Fake Interactivity becoming a
Discredited Trope in the years since the show premiered, Comic Book Adventures still has the characters asking the audience for help. - By the Power of Grayskull!: "Super Readers...to the rescue!"
- Canine Confusion: Wolfy has big rabbit-like ears (especially in the third season) even though wolves in real life have smaller, pointier ears.
- Captain Ersatz: Pig's brothers' clothes are clearly based on Mario and Luigi.
- Character Catchphrase: Several, the ones above are just examples.
- Christmas Episode: In "Twas The Night Before Christmas", Whyatt wonders why Santa likes giving gifts to children but he is quite upset that none of his family answered his question. Hence, he and the Super Readers jumped into the book to learn about it. He finally learned that Santa likes giving gifts to children because he loves to make them and their families happy.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Whatever happened to Mr. Lizard?
- Cinderella Plot: In "Cinderella", Red Riding Hood is invited to Sleeping Beauty's princess party, but doesn't quite feel like a princess. The Super Readers leap into the book of Cinderella to see how she handles her own princess problem. The aesop of the episode was to Be Yourself, and it's quite Bowdlerized to be appropriate for a preschool audience. There was also a P.O.V. Sequel told from the Prince's point of view.
- Color-Coded Characters:
- Whyatt/Super Why is green.
- Red/Wonder Red is... red.
- Princess Pea/Princess Presto is pink/purple (more often pink).
- Pig/Alpha-Pig is purple.
- Woofster is blue.
- Cool Plane: The "Why-fliers"— every hero has got one, except Woofster, who becomes a passenger for Super Why's.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Red.
- Derailed Fairy Tale: Doing this is the whole point of the missions.
- Darker and Edgier: Opposed to the usual Lighter and Softer concept, in Humpty Dumpty, the Super Readers have to save Humpty Dumpty from falling off his wall, which is a lot Darker And Edgier than most premises of the stories the Super Reader's travel in. Even the background music that plays when Humpty Dumpty cries for help makes it Darker and Edgier.
- Deadpan Snarker: In one episode, the characters go into Red's story. When they meet the Big Bad Wolf both times, although her tone doesn't reveal it, Red's expression as she delivers her well-known lines to the wolf just screams this.
- Disneyfication: All the Fairy Tales with any potentially disturbing content are made much Lighter and Softer. For instance, in the "Hansel and Gretel" episode, the kids eat the witch's roof, the witch says "how dare you eat my roof!", the heroes help H&G say sorry, and the witch accepts the apology and gives them house-shaped cookies. The end!
- A Dog Named "Dog": Woofster is merely called "Puppy" when outside of the books. This was dropped in Season 3.
- Dub Name Change: The French dub renames Whyatt to Tom. Pig, Princess Pea and Red are renamed to Bidule, Princesse and Cerise, respectively.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The heroes' "Book Club" headquarters.
- Expy: Aiden, who appeared in "The Rhyming Carnival", looks almost identical to Alex Porter. He's even voiced by Christian Distefano!
- Fairy Tale Free-for-All: The show takes place in "Storybrook Village, where all our fairy tale friends live!" And the place is populated with characters from pretty much every popular fairy tale ever, including Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Sleeping Beauty. The main characters are related to or adapted from these fairy tales (namely, Princess and the Pea, The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk). Even characters from well-known nursery rhymes are included, such as Peter Piper (and his peck of pickled peppers) and Little Boy Blue.
- Fantastic Flora: Flowers shaped like books grow in Storybrook Village.
- Feud Episode: In "Momotaro the Peach Boy", Pig and his brothers want to build a backyard fort but they're so busy arguing, they didn’t even get the job done. The Super Readers head into a Japanese folktale to find the answer, which is "Teamwork". In the end, Pig and his brothers worked together and managed to build the fort.
- Five-Token Band: A borderline example. Red is white, Whyatt is (maybe) Hispanic, Princess Pea is of mixed race, Pig is, well, a pig, and You has a tiny head.
- Foregone Conclusion: Of course the Super Readers will solve all the problems! Played with, however, in that sometimes they guess wrong, and Super You must make the correct choices for them.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: The tales often are changed to be Lighter and Softer.
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Pig. It can be implied since he’s the main Token Non-Human Super Reader.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: Super Why and Alpha Pig are the two boys and Wonder Red and Princess Presto are the girls. Averted after Woofster, a male puppy, joins the Super Readers from Season 2 onwards.
- Girlish Pigtails: Red, Jill and Joy wear their hair like this. For Red's case, they turn into Braids of Action when she turns into Wonder Red.
- Gratuitous English: The Korean dub of the show is meant to teach English to the viewers, in a similar fashion to Dora the Explorer, so this happens a lot. For instance, the names of the characters are kept in English, and the answer to the problem is usually left in English.
- Growling Gut: It happened to one of the Super Readers and the characters in the storybook.
- Whyatt's stomach growled twice in "Tiddalick the Frog".
- Pig in "The Ant and the Grasshopper".
- Princess Pea in "Snow White" due to a bad tummy ache.
- The characters in the episodes "The Swiss Family Robinson", "The Ant and The Grasshopper" and "The Prince and the Pauper" suffered this too.
- Wolfy in the episode "The Rolling Rice Cakes".
- Halloween Episode: In "The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Halloween", everyone in Storybook Village is celebrating Halloween. Whyatt and his friends invited Pig to go trick-or-treating but he is too scared to do so. They all then jumped into the titular book where the titular ghost was afraid of Halloween. After Super Why changed the story of the book, both the ghost and Pig learned that Halloween is not scary at all but rather it is imaginary and they’re no longer afraid of Halloween after all. At the end, Pig joined his friends to go trick-or-treating and celebrating Halloween.
- Hanukkah Episode: In the episode "Judith's Happy Chanukah", we learn that Red Riding Hood is Jewish, and the Super Readers jump into a book to learn more about Hanukkah.
- High-Class Gloves: Princess Presto.
- Hyperspace Wardrobe: The Super Readers transform by spinning to work around having to show how Super-Deformed people dress and undress.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: The male Super Readers all have these.
- Intrepid Fictioneer: What the whole show is about.
- Kid Hero: The Super Readers are all young children who jump into books to solve the characters' problems.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Pig the anthropomorphic pig is among the otherwise mostly human characters inhabiting the story world. There's even an episode where he notices he's the only pig out of Whyatt's group of friends and is afraid he might be a bit too different from them.
- Literal Metaphor: In the Comic Book Adventures episode "More Man's More Plan," More Man gets rid of periods so he can never stop talking...but falls prey to a literal run-on sentence as he runs away from his words.
- Little Red Fighting Hood: Red.
- Loose Tooth Episode: In "The Story of the Tooth Fairy", Whyatt loses his first tooth, but he's rather reluctant to give it up to the Tooth Fairy, so he and the other Super Readers decide to ask her if he can keep it. She agrees to let him keep his tooth if he writes her a note to remind her.
- My Nayme Is: It's often spelled "Wyatt", when it's properly spelled "Whyatt" with an "H".
- Never Bareheaded:
- Seriously, have you ever seen Pig or Red Riding Hood without their hats on? Same goes for Alpha-Pig and Wonder Red.
- Also, Princess, be she Pea or Presto, is always wearing her crown.
- Pinocchio Nose: An episode takes place in Geppetto's workshop in The Adventures of Pinocchio.
- Plot Tailored to the Party: Alpha Pig, Wonder Red and/or Princess Presto, and Super Why always help in every episode, and in that exact order too. "Super You" also helps each and every one of them.
- P.O.V. Boy, Poster Girl: Gender-inverted. Despite Super Why being in the title and posters for Super Why's Comic Book Adventures, almost all of the focus is given to Power Paige. Super Why often doesn't even appear in the episodes.
- Punch-Clock Villain: The antagonists in the storybooks will point out that the only reason they're being evil is because the book says that's what they're supposed to do.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: In "Jack and the Beanstalk", when Whyatt witnessed his baby sister Joy growing huge while throwing a tantrum, albeit being a figment of his imagination.Whyatt: Woah, Joy! You're having one! Huge! Giant! Tantrum!
- Punny Name:
- Whyatt.
- In the French dub, he's named Tom, which is an anagram for the word "mot", which means "word".
- "Reading Is Cool" Aesop: This show teaches this lesson to kids.
- Reality Warper: In the books they enter, Super Why's pen, the Why-Writer, can zap words into a story. Most of the time, it's changing a specific word(s) to something different (usually its opposite), but a few episodes (i.e the cookbook episode) mix it up and have him fill in a blank. At least one episode features swapping words in a given sentence.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Whyatt/Super Why is the calm, intellectual and (somewhat) introverted Blue while Red/Wonder Red is the zesty, enthusiastic and extroverted Red.
- Scooby Stack: In the Jack and the Beanstalk episode, the team does this around a door when they first enter the giant's castle.
- Sdrawkcab Name: In the French dub, Whyatt is renamed Tom, which when spelled backward is "mot", the French word for "word".
- Short-Distance Phone Call: Occurs quite often as Whyatt uses his Super Duper Computer to call the other team members, even if they're all in the same area.
- Lampshaded in "Woofster and the Pet Pack". Whyatt is about to call the Super Readers, but Pig interrupts him saying that him and the others are already there.
- Show Within a Show: There seem to be two fairy tale worlds (Or rather, two layers of fairy tale worlds), the one the characters share and the one in the books they enter.
- The Song Remains the Same: In the Korean dub, the "Hip Hip Hooray" Wrap-Up Song is kept in English. This also happens to the song Jill sings when stomping on Pig's blocks in episode 1.
- Stock Sound Effect:
- Joy had her voice provided by stock baby sounds in the first season.
- The usual overused baby cry is heard in "Jack and the Beanstalk", when Baby Joy throws a tantrum.
- Strictly Formula: Every single episode has one of the Super Readers having a problem and wondering what the answer is (the kind of problem little kids have like not being able to play the game he or she wanted). They all gather at the Book Club and pick out a story. They transform and fly into the story. Along the way, they collect Super Letters which help answer the question they are wondering about. After reading the story and meeting the main character, 3 problems occur that require the usage of the Super Readers' powers in order to help the character(s). Another problem occurs at the end of the story and Super Why has to use his power to change the story and it ends happily. The Super Readers fly back to Storybrook Village and solve the problem they were wondering about.
- Suddenly Shouting: "We're ready to FLY into this book!"
- Super-Deformed: The art style is super stuck this way.
- Superheroes Wear Capes: The Super Readers. Princess Presto's cape almost looks like a repurposed wedding veil!
- Take Your Time: A non-video game example. Despite resolving real life problems, the characters have to leave for the clubhouse, travel through the book, insert the letters they found on the computer, then go back to where they need to before they can solve the problem. No one else seems to notice the length of their absence.
- Talking Animal: Woofster is a talking dog.
- The Unseen: Super You. Justified, as it is meant to be the viewer (or one of them, if 2 or more people are watching this show in this same room).
- Together We Are X: After the Transformation Sequence, in which each of the four (later five) Super Readers announces their name and power, they all pose together and declare "Together we are the Super Readers!".
- Token Non-Human: Alpha Pig, before a super puppy named Woofster joins the team in Season 2.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Wonder Red and Princess Presto.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Red shows some concern about what to wear to a ball in one episode, and in another she really enjoys herself figure skating in the Land of Snow.
- Too Dumb to Live: Snow White, in the version of the fairy tale the Super Readers enter. Even though her friends are telling her repeatedly not to trust the Obviously Evil Queen, she always does.
- Tyop on the Cover: As the super readers enter the story of Pinocchio, Pinocchio's name is misspelled on one of the pages.
- Transformation Sequence: Happens before they travel into the book—the characters spin around to change their clothing (except Woofster, who does a backflip instead), likely because the characters are children and their heads are huge.
- Two Girls to a Team: One of the few examples with an even split between the two genders (with the addition of Woofster who is a male puppy, the gender scale is tipped).
- Team Hand-Stack: The team does this when going off to solve the problem, with Super You (the viewer) invited to put out a hand too.
- Underwear of Power: Super Why has this.
- Vocal Evolution:
- Whyatt's voice in the second season sounds a bit higher and younger than in the first. The third season has his voice even higher than the previous season.
- Pig's voice sounds deeper as a result of his voice actor going through puberty. He would go back to his normal pitch come season 3.
- Working Through the Cold: Princess Pea isn't feeling well in "Snow White", but goes on the mission, anyway.
- Youthful Freckles: Red has these.
- Hip hip hooray! The Super Readers saved the day!
