Feliz Cumpleaños, Dora! "Dora the Explorer" Turns 10

Aug. 12, 2010— -- Every preschooler's favorite bilingual heroine is turning the big 1-0 this weekend. The hour-long special, "Dora's Big Birthday Adventure," will air on Sunday, August 15. Dora Marquez, the animated star of Nickelodeon's Peabody award-winning cartoon, "Dora the Explorer," has become a cultural phenomenon since the show was launched in 2000.

Aside from her own TV show, Dora's smiling face can be seen splashed across the internet, on clothing and school supplies, even on food packages and DVDs.The young Latina character brings in billions of dollars in merchandising revenue and delivers top ratings for the kids TV network Nickelodeon every year, impressive for any TV series hitting the 10-year mark, let alone a cartoon.

Creating Dora

While this enthusiastic young Latina character seems like a simple idea, creating Dora was far from child's play.

Show creators Val Walsh and Chris Grifford said when the show launched 10 years ago, the thought of using a female Latina character as the hero was unheard of. Several different ideas were thrown onto the drawing board before Dora became the star.

"There were so many original characters. First she was a bunny, then she was a Martian, then it was -- it was a boy bunny, actually," Grifford explained.

"We came up with this girl character. Her name was Tess, and then her name was Nina and the Nick execs said 'what about if she was Latina?'" Welsh continued. "We said 'we don't know. That's a really great idea. How would we do that?'"

The duo brought in cultural advisors, including Carlos Cortes, a University of California, Irvine professor, and soon Dora was born as the first animated Latina character in a leading role.

Dora Changes the Way Kids Watch Cartoons

Show creators explained they are also very careful to purposefully avoid stereotypes when writing the scripts.

"There's this old Latino stereotype of Latinos sleeping under the nopal cactus with their hats down over their head and what I try to do is have the program work against stereotypes not reinforce them," Cortes explained. "When I saw Tiko in the first scene, there was Tiko asleep I said, 'no, no, that reinforces stereotypes. Let's have Tiko active."

But the lovable Latina hasn't been completely void of conflict. In May 2010, a satirical mug shot showing the character bruised and beaten spread widely on the internet during the signing of the controversial Arizona immigration bill.

"Dora the Explorer" is far from your typical cartoon. Unlike other children's favorites, such as Spongebob or Scooby-Doo, adult references are absent and instead of the characters doing all of the talking, Dora creates a two-way interactive environment.

Serving as the children's friendly guides, Dora and her trusty pals ask viewers for help in making decisions about which way to go or what to do, pausing after each question.

Show co-creator Chris Grifford said the pauses changed the way kids watched the show. Children didn't like just being asked questions, they wanted time to answer back and contribute.

"We found that prior to the interaction, attentiveness for preschool shows would be about 60, 65 percent and that was pretty common knowledge at that point." Grifford explained.

"Once you added the interaction, it went up to 90, 95, 98 percent for the kids really feeling as if they needed to watch because they were going to be asked a question and they needed to answer it."

And toddlers are a tough crowd to please. Most cartoons take months to put together. "Dora the Explorer" takes a full year for each half-hour episode.

"We say that the preschoolers [in focus groups] are actually the producers of the show because we have to go out and we have to pitch every story before it becomes a script," Walsh said. "They have a say when they don't like something. We listen, and when they make changes they are often right so we take them very seriously."

Dora also teaches children Spanish in a different way. Shows like "Sesame Street" would take time out of an episode's storyline once in a while for Spanish lessons, but the energetic Dora slips into her native Spanish tongue without explaining its meaning.

"Hola! Soy Dora! Vamanos, Let's go!" Dora giggles.

The voice of Dora belongs to 14-year-old Kaitlyn Sanchez.

"Basically a lot of energy and I just go higher pitched a little bit," Sanchez said, in explaining how she mastered the character's personality.

Aside from teaching Spanish in America, Dora also teaches English to children speaking 34 other languages in more than one hundred countries.