A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: New Book Highlights the Poetry of Mister Rogers's Music

If you can’t wait for the new Mister Rogers movie with Tom Hanks to come out later this year, here’s a little something to tide you over until then. As Paste magazine reports, a new book highlights 75 songs that Fred Rogers wrote and performed on his show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

The forthcoming biopic and book are unrelated, but they both carry the same title: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The subtitle of the book reads The Poetry of Mister Rogers and, in written format, the songs do resemble children’s poems. Published by Quirk Books, each song/poem is accompanied by illustrations from Luke Flowers.

Many of the songs will be familiar to those who grew up watching the show. One of the best-known examples is “It’s You I Like”—an uplifting song that Rogers sang to Jeff Erlanger, a 10-year-old boy in a wheelchair who grew up to be an advocate for disability rights. (Just watch this video of Erlanger surprising Rogers by showing up at his induction into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999 and try not to cry.)

Rogers often wrote songs to address scenarios that might be scary or confusing to children. One song, for instance, was titled “You Can Never Go Down the Drain." In one of the show’s most heartfelt moments, the puppet Daniel Striped Tiger sings the opening lines of “Sometimes I Wonder If I’m a Mistake.” Performing the second part of the song, Lady Aberlin reassures him, “You’re not a fake. You’re no mistake. You're my friend.”

If you’re ready to walk down memory lane and relive some of your favorite moments from the show, you can get a copy of the book from Amazon for $13.51. It’s also available as an Audible audiobook, narrated by actors John Lithgow and Kate Mulgrew.

[h/t Paste]