the good neighbor the life and work of fred rogers

From his position at the Fred Rogers Center he was able to see the importance of Mister Rogers legacy and be in a position to write with access to both documentary evidence and people that were around Fred Rogers. When he retired from the Heinz Endowments in 2008 he was asked to lead The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at St Vincent College where he is still a fellow. Then he became the President of the Heinz Endowments, which helped to fund of the Mr Rogers programming.

he was a journalist for 30 years culminating in being the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1990 to 1998. The Good Neighbor is Max King’s first book. Once the family was convinced of the need, they wanted King to be the author. Max King convinced the family of the need for a biography, not because he wanted to be the one to write it, but because he understood the importance of a good biography to legacy of Mister Rogers. At the end of the book, the author Max King, says that the family took a good bit of convincing to participate in the biography because Mr Rogers had been resistant to a biography when he was alive. It is surprising that it has taken 15 years since his death for an actual biography of Fred Rogers to be written. An engaging story, rich in detail, The Good Neighbor is the definitive portrait of a beloved figure, cherished by multiple generations.

Drawing on original interviews, oral histories, and archival documents, Maxwell King traces Rogers’s personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work, including a surprising decision to walk away from the show to make television for adults, only to return to the neighborhood with increasingly sophisticated episodes, written in collaboration with experts on childhood development. The Good Neighbor, the first full-length biography of Fred Rogers, tells the story of this utterly unique and enduring American icon. Rogers was fiercely devoted to children and to taking their fears, concerns, and questions about the world seriously. As the creator and star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, he was a champion of compassion, equality, and kindness.

Fred Rogers (1928-2003) was an enormously influential figure in the history of television and in the lives of tens of millions of children.

The good neighbor the life and work of fred rogers