A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Movie Tie-In): Neighborly Words of Wisdom from Mister Rogers

by Fred Rogers, Tom Junod (Contributor)

The inspiring profile brought to life in the major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, plus a collection of warm advice and encouragement from America's favorite neighbor.

Tom Junod's Esquire profile of Fred Rogers, "Can You Say... Hero?," has been hailed as a classic of magazine writing. Now, his moving story of meeting and observing the beloved host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is the inspiration for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, directed by Marielle Heller and written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster.

Here, Junod's unforgettable piece appears for the first time in book form alongside an inspiring collection of advice and encouragement from Mister Rogers himself. Covering topics like relationships, childhood, communication, parenthood, and more, Rogers's signature sayings and wise thoughts are included here. Pairing the definitive portrait of a national icon with his own instructions for living your best, kindest life, this book is a timeless treasure for Mister Rogers fans.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Audiobook, Memoir, Parenting, Self Help, Inspirational

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 5, 2019

About the author

Fred McFeely Rogers was an American educator, minister, songwriter, and television host. Rogers was the host of the television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in production from 1968 to 2001. Rogers was also an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Reviews

[TraceyL · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great little read. This is a combination of parenting advice given by Mister Rogers himself in other works, and an article profiling the TV host. It's very sweet and I think everyone needs a little Mister Rogers sometimes.

[Eve Schaub · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LOVE Mister Rogers. So I feel bad not LOVING his book, but I did like it. I was particularly disappointed by the format which is basically chapters full of bullet points, some of which are classic-Mister-Rogers-brilliant, and others? Not so much. I would've loved being able to read this same information in a narrative format featuring say, paragraphs, or better yet- stories from Mister Rogers OWN parenting experiences which, strangely, only arise here in the barest, most fleeting of references. Which, in a book about children's growth and development, strikes me as weird.

For these reasons, as well as some annoying repetitiveness, it was a slow slog for a while in the middle, but worth it in the end for two reasons: first, the essay by Tom Junod on which the new movie is based (BTW the movie is fantastic) which is a really remarkable journalistic portrait of this fascinating and enigmatic man. Second, the final chapter, which is entitled "Growing in Adulthood," because this was the chapter that made me sit up and grab my pencil for underlining. Quotes like "There is no normal life that is free of pain." and "You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices." are the kind of simple-but-brilliant ideas I hope for from no less a luminary than my television dad.

[Leia Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a life this man lead. He might be my greatest personal hero.

[Ricky McConnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good book on Mister Rogers. I would recommend this one to parents and grandparents. There are many passages with advice and teachings from Fred Rogers. I treated this book as a daily reading for enlightenment. I would read a page or two, and then start again the next day. you could also just use the book as a reference now and then when you wanted encouragement about children or life in general. I did read the first part through in longer readings when it was talking about his life off the tv screen as was seen in the movie. If you are a fan of Mister Rogers, I think you would enjoy this !

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how the article that Tom Junod wrote about Mister Rogers is included in this book of quotes. This was a fun read after seeing A Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood over the weekend.

[Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Discovering the truth about ourselves is the work of a lifetime, but its worth the effort."

When I saw this book I just had to read it. So many of us grew up with the kind wisdom of Mr. Rogers. This book is full of some great quotes to remind us how we need to be patient and nurturing to ourselves and those around us.

[Brandon Forsyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful little companion to the recent film, which thankfully includes the article that the film is based around. While I’m not a parent, and much of the advice here has no direct impact on my life, it made me think of myself as a son and the myriad ways in which the ways I was raised have impacted me as an adult. Mom, if you’re reading this, thank you.

[Élisabeth Léger · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have always felt like Mr Rogers was one of the best teachers you ever had, this book is a great read!
Suggestion: read it in sections / chapters to fully assimilate the thoughts and reflections.

[F. Phyllis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light,, easy, feel good read. Full of wisdom, compassion and a great love for children. A real champion and hero.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really touched me inside and out. The main goal in the movie was interviewing Mister Rogers for a magazine called “Can You Say ...Hero?” It includes the article from the magazine and lots of helpful phrases that can help people going through a rough time in life. I’m happy to give this a good review. Someday when I am struggling with my feelings. I can always come back to this book and remember how happy this book made me feel.

-Mike McDougall-

[Andrew Waibel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book with a fantastic amount of advice and quotes, but that's really all. It is essentially a book filled with inspiring messages, something you may not read cover to cover but may turn to when you need a pick me up. Long prologue, but given that the rest of the book is quotes it essentially becomes the book itself.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a lovely book to end 2021. I watched Mister Rogers often as a child so it was lovely to reminisce through this book. His wisdom means even more to me now that I am a mother.

Here are my favorite quotes from the book:


Children can't be expected to leave the angry and unhappy parts of themselves at the door before coming in. We all need to feel that we can bring the whole of ourselves to the people who care about us.

Only by understanding our own uniqueness can we fully appreciate how special our neighbor really is. Only by being aware of our own endowments can we begin to marvel at the variety which our Creator has provided to humankind.

Nobody learns unless he or she is ready to learn. What are the basic necessities for children to be ready to learn?
1. A sense of self worth
2. A sense of trust
3. Curiosity
4. The capacity to look and listen carefully
5. The capacity to play
6. Times of solitude

A love of learning has a lot to do with learning that we’re loved.

I believe that infants and babies whose mothers and fathers give them loving comfort whenever and however they can are truly the fortunate ones. I think they’re more likely to find life’s trouble manageable and I think they may also turn out to be the adults most able to pass loving concern along to the generations that follow after them.

It can be very hard to trust our own judgements as parents when our feelings seem to be most different from other peoples’. The best kind of friends are those who remind us that we are the ones who know most about ourselves, about our children and about our relationships with our children.

It may be painful for us to see our children modifying or even rejecting ideas that were important to us and adopting others that could never be comfortable for us, but out of that difference may come the reinforcement of two other important values, one is tolerance and the other is awareness that people who disagree over things they hold dear really can live together in love and respect.

Many mothers feel severely pressured these days. They often feel like they’re falling short in one, IBD not several, parts of their lives. They often feel like they’re failures. Well, people aren’t failures when they’re doing the best they can. Our performance doesn’t have to be measured against anyone else’s, just against our own abilities to cope.

Children who have learned to be comfortably dependent can become not only comfortably independent but also comfortable with having people depend on them. They can lean, stand and be leaned upon because they know what a good feeling it can be to feel needed.

Some days doing the best we can may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do but life isn’t perfect on any front and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.

The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them, some have few and give everything away.

[Trio · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a wonderfully warm collection of Rogers' poems and songs, with actual soundbites performed by the man himself. Fred Rogers was my first hero and continues to influence me to this day. My younger brother and I would wait all day for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood to come on our local PBS station, and I watched them all several times through with my kids back in the 1990's.

This great human worked tirelessly to encourage children to be proud of themselves, and never had anything but kind words to say.

There's also an incredible biography of him on Netflix, if anyone's inspired to find out more about his awe-inspiring life, as well as that pivotal time in our history.

[Jack Connolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice book to remind you who Mr. Rogers was. As a book of his lessons for children and their parents, they are a pleasant page Turner. I recommend it for lifelong fans, many of which will find his teachings soothing, as well as rather insightful. As someone who watched his show, this was a fun read. As a parent, I admire what he has to say and hope to follow some of this as I watch my children grow. For those reasons, I recommend this book.

[Camille Bond · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you work with children in any capacity this book will be extremely helpful in understanding why children seek certain behaviors and what’s the best way to respond. I loved that Fred Rogers passed on some of his life-learnings from working with children over the years. I love to think that his legacy in TV still lives on with his Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, all of his love and care for children has been well preserved by his production company.

[Natalie Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed hearing Tom Junod’s Esquire article that the movie was based on and gentle reminders from Mr. Rogers in his own voice on how to be kind, compassionate and present to and for each other.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took all year, but just because I didn’t want it to end. I find Mr. Rogers and his wisdom so comforting that I just read a bit at a time.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little bit slow at times, but completely relevant and important advise! Mister Rogers had such a kind heart and accepting demeanour, that I will take any chance I can get to learn lessons from him. There are lessons in this novel that I will always carry with me!

This book is it is a mix of a novel written by Fred Rodgers, and small stories embedded throughout from the perspective of another gentleman. I enjoyed this mix as I still read lessons and stories from Mister Rogers, yet enjoyed the perspective of someone who actually interacted and spent time with Mister Rogers!

Good read!

[Christina Vandenhurk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love his tidbits of wisdom even more as an adult.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, based on the magazine article by Tom Junod
Nine out of 10

This is a note about the film, with Fred Rogers at the center of the story…

Although this motion picture has received only one nomination for the Golden Globes that will be awarded in just a few days, for the two-time winner of the Oscars, iconic Tom Hanks for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture, it remains to be seen what the members of the Academy will feel about this wonderful biographical drama, better for this cinephile than Knives Out Knives Out - http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/12/k... - the Farewell - http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/12/t... - or even the celebrated Once Upon time in Hollywood – a note at the same address as the aforementioned films…

A Beautiful Day is about the triumph of positivity, optimism over skepticism, cynical attitudes, with the kind, generous, self-effacing Fred Rogers aka the equally serene and admired Tom Hanks, at the center of the narrative, which is about the friendship that would be born between two rather opposite characters, once the equanimous, older man manages to help the younger, the journalist Lloyd Vogel aka the splendid Matthew Rhys, overcome his issues, the anger, the sadness and remorse, the hatred he feels towards his father, Jerry Vogel aka the always outstanding Chris Cooper – winner of the Oscar and Golden Globe for Adaptation – that had abandoned him and his sister, when his mother was dying in extreme pain, shouting and screaming as the public and the fugitive husband would learn.
Lloyd Vogel is an investigative journalist who had gained a reputation for being rather heartless and unlikable when his boss at the Esquire Magazine gives him an assignment, to make a profile of the very famous Fred Rogers for a series called Heroes and the man is more than displeased with the task, protesting that he does something else, but this is just the point, the editor wants him to change this image and feels that the interviews and the article he has to write would be the chance for a major change and anticipating, she may be right.

It is all credible, although some have dismissed the narrative as too corny, sugary and perhaps incompatible with the present – indeed, when all the passengers on the subway train recognize the admired Fred Rogers and start singing his tune about kindness, neighborliness: “it’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, would you be my neighbor…” it seems surreal and quite impossible, unlikely to happen almost anywhere today, when a fool is the leader of the free world and that surely reflects the level of that world.

To begin with, Lloyd Vogel is more than skeptical, adamant as he had been to skip this assignment, looks at the interviews with cynicism and a certain disdain, seeing as the interviewee is ‘playing with dolls for children’, especially after the vicious incident taking place at his sister’s wedding, where the abandoning father not only arrives, but comes to talk with his son and when this one is backing away and the mother is mentioned, Jerry Vogel says that the encounter with the long deceased woman was such a brief affair as to suggest probably some weakness, maybe vice, or even major flaw and this is more than the son would take and it all ends with a fist fight and a face with major signs on it.
However, Mister Rogers – the only one on the list of Heroes that would accept to be interviewed by the journalist with a vicious image, although he does not see himself as a hero and we would learn that he had read the articles by the young man and wanted to interact with him, surely because of his interest in the angry and the penchant he has to help others and take ‘their burden upon him’ – would see the interviewer on the set of the show he has and where he has a tent to work with, only he is unable to open and do much with it, accepting this failure and putting it on the air, because he says children have to see that adults often face problems and sometimes they have difficulty solving them…words to that effect, probably.

Matthew Rhys is perfect in the complex role, for to start with, he is almost contemptive of this older man, who ‘plays with dolls for kids’ and does not like the fact that he is in fact questioned – what is the name of his wife – Andrea – what happened with his face, he tells a lie, but then gradually opens up – then the talk show host would even play with the dolls, trying to help the process of opening up and releasing the pain, anger, deep sadness – that was a scene where this viewer thought he would reject such an approach, that is if someone would play with the dolls that would start nudging and talking to the viewer.
Perhaps quite a few in the audience would be provoked into thinking about their own problems – there is a very outré and intriguing scene during which Mister Rogers invites his companion to think of those who have helped him become what he is and then looks into the camera at us, for what seems like hours – and the under signed was made to think of the wrong way he dealt with his daughter – we still do not seem to connect, last time even during this film, when a question about alcohol was probably improper, misplaced – and how wonderful it would be if we all had the same manner, kindness, generosity, appeal of the ultimate hero of this movie.

He is not without a flaw and talks about the fact that his own children must have had a very hard time being the sons of such a celebrated figure, one of them not talking about it and the other confronting the issue somehow, and we learn that banging the piano is the way to deal with stress, having so many people write and ask him – Joanne, his wife, states that he writes hundreds of letters and is so involved with the others, always trying to help them.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is not just an excellent feature, it provides viewers with a fantastic Role Model, offers a positive, optimistic and ultimately beneficial approach to life – positive psychology studies have demonstrated that those who are positive, optimistic live longer, more successful private and professional lives and what is more, so do those who are in their vicinity, who benefit from the Halo Effect and the interaction with them…

[Judy Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

He was a gentle man who loved children and made them feel good about themselves. We don’t realize how much we do shows in our children. I think it would be great reading for new parents or parents-to-be.

[Rebekah Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t realize this book is 95% quotes. Not even interwoven into stories, just quotes. I find quotes more powerful when some context is given so, not something I enjoyed.

[Julian Ordaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

- Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence pg. 22

- There is an inner rhythm that sets the normal beat for human growth. We need to respect that rhythm in ourselves pg. 36

- I like to think that they, in their own ways, are “alone in the best room” of their houses, using the solitude they need to find the courage to grow pg. 42

- A computer can help you learn to spell hug, but it can never help you know the risk or the joy of actually giving or receiving one pg. 88

- What matters even more than superimposing adult symbols is how a persons inner life finally puts together the alphabet and numbers of his outer life pg. 91

- We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears pg. 113

- And when children learn the truth about who made a special wish come true, or who gave them a special gift, they learn something much more important than just “the facts” pg. 132

- The world tomorrow will belong to those who brought it the greatest hope pg. 144

[Caffeinated Fae]

DNFing

I purchased the audiobook of this from Audible during one of their sales. I couldn't wait to read this book. I didn't really grow up watching Mister Rogers, but I did grow up with a fond love of him. He was a calming presence in my life, and I love reading all the little stories that have been told about how great of a man Fred Rogers was. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the 20-minute mark.

One of the first scenes in this book is Mr. Rogers undressing and a description of him "slightly aswing at the fine bobbing nest of himself." Look, I understand that this is a grown man and that grown men get naked, however, I don't feel that this was necessary. The slight sexual undertones in this book that I hope were unintentional made me uncomfortable. I'm not sure if it was the narrator's tone or the writing, but it was not a book I could finish.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book and is certainly an audible book that makes the best use of that format possible. If you miss hearing the voice of Mr. Rogers, you can hear it in this audible book. You can hear his thoughts and his wisdom, and his opinions.

I assume that most of the people reading this are grown-ups. I was not exactly a Mr. Rogers hands-on fan, but listening to him for these few hours has reminded me that his voice and his love and his wisdom played a role somehow in my life, even if it was only a small one. I urge every person reading this to listen to this audible book, which is just chock full of wisdom.

[Lynn Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely words to remind everyone of the importance of love and patience in life, and especially when interacting with children.

[Frau Ott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would like to keep an extra copy of this to use as a reference. It is comprised of many quotes from Mister Rogers and also gives some great biographical info.

[Clara Biesel]

Beautiful. Makes me think I want to read a lot more of Mr. Roger's writing.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Tom Junod's Esquire profile of Fred Rogers, "Can You Say../.Hero?" (first 37 pages of the book), esp. after having seen the Beautiful Day movie (loved Hanks' and Rhys's performances there). The rest of the book is a bunch of categorized quotes from Mister Rogers. I mean, it's Mister Rogers, so of course these quotes are like warm, loving hugs. But as a book, just okay.

[David Strawbridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. So much useful parenting information from someone who is a true interpersonal wizard.