PBS Kids Trivia
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50 free PBS Kids trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Before it was PBS Kids it was PTV, a 1994 block with animated P-Pals; before that, Sesame Street and Mister Rogers simply aired under the PBS logo. The brand with the green thought-bubble logo arrived in 1999 along with Dragon Tales, a 24-hour channel that flopped, and a long run of shows that taught reading, maths and kindness to two generations of American children. This quiz goes wide across that history: the 1993 P-Pals and the 2022 electric-blue rebrand, PBS Kids Go! and Sprout, plus the shows themselves — Arthur's Elwood City and its Ziggy Marley theme, the Hacker in Cyberchase, Buddy the T. rex on Dinosaur Train, Agents Olive and Otto of Odd Squad, WordGirl's chimpanzee sidekick, LeVar Burton's 26 Emmys, the Kratt brothers' lemur, Daniel Tiger's debt to Fred Rogers and Molly of Denali's first. Early questions are for anyone who grew up with the block; later ones ask for premiere years, production studios, creators and the name of the Secret Museum's robot. Fifty questions, every one sourced.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was the PBS children's block called before it became PBS Kids in 1999?
PTV
PTV began in July 1994 on just 11 pilot stations, built for Ready to Learn, a push to bring early-learning television to underprivileged children.
Q 02In Martha Speaks, what does family pet Martha eat that gives her the power of speech?
Alphabet soup
Alphabet soup. The pasta letters go to her brain instead of her stomach, which is why the family pet suddenly starts answering back.
Q 03What were the boy and girl mascots of the 1999 PBS Kids logo called?
Dash and Dot
Dash and Dot. Each grinned under a thought bubble meant to stand for imagination, and Dash stayed on the logo until a 2022 redesign retired him.
Q 04What colour did the PBS Kids primary logo become in the 2022 rebrand?
Electric blue
Electric blue. The circle borrows the blue that parent network PBS adopted in 2019, while the lettering keeps the old lime green.
Q 05Which cable giant co-owned PBS Kids Sprout with PBS, Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment?
Comcast
Comcast. Sprout took over the preschool cable rights in 2005, when the first 24-hour PBS Kids channel lost its DirecTV subsidy and closed.
Q 06Which live-action PBS Kids series follows child agents who solve cases with maths?
Odd Squad
Odd Squad. Its agency is run entirely by children, who are sent after problems such as unicorns and wizards that have escaped from books.
Q 07Which animated PBS Kids series was the first to be inspired by Fred Rogers' long-running show?
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. Each episode is built around a short 'strategy song', and parents report singing them with their children when a hard moment comes.
Q 08The 1999 PBS Kids Channel was created partly to compete with which cable network?
Noggin
Noggin was co-owned by Nickelodeon and the producers of Sesame Street, so the new PBS channel was left unable to show PBS's own most famous series.
Q 09Arthur Read, the star of Arthur, is what kind of animal?
An aardvark
An aardvark. Marc Brown made Arthur up as a bedtime story when his young son asked for a tale about an animal, and the first one that came to mind alphabetically stuck.
Q 10Arthur is set in which fictional place?
Elwood City
Elwood City borrows from creator Marc Brown's childhood in Erie, Pennsylvania: strict teacher Mr. Ratburn is modelled on his own algebra teacher.
Q 11Who performed Arthur's reggae theme song 'Believe in Yourself'?
Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers
Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers. Chance the Rapper later covered the tune, and in 2017 he and Ziggy performed it together on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Q 12In Arthur's 2022 finale, set 20 years on, who has become a police officer?
D.W.
D.W. Arthur's bossy younger sister ends up handing out traffic tickets, while Arthur himself is about to publish a graphic novel about his own childhood.
Q 13Buster Baxter, who got his own spin-off Postcards from Buster, is what animal?
A rabbit
A rabbit. Buster's travel show met real families, and when PBS dropped a 2005 episode about children with two mothers, some stations aired it anyway.
Q 21Which crowdfunding site hosted the 2014 campaign to revive Reading Rainbow?
Kickstarter
Kickstarter. The show's longtime host launched the drive himself, promising to bring the series back for every child, and it took in about $6.5 million.
Q 22What kind of animal is Zoboomafoo, title star of a 1999 PBS Kids wildlife series?
A lemur
A lemur. Zoboomafoo was played by Jovian, a real sifaka born at the Duke Lemur Center, with a puppet stepping in whenever he had to talk.
Q 23Which PBS Kids cartoon turns two real-life zoologist brothers into its animated heroes?
Wild Kratts
Wild Kratts. Chris and Martin Kratt appear in person to introduce each episode before their cartoon selves take over in 'creature power' suits.
Q 14From 2016, new Sesame Street episodes premiered on which premium channel before reaching PBS?
HBO
HBO. The deal was a financial lifeline for the nonprofit that makes the show, and PBS stations still received every episode nine months later.
Q 15Who co-created Sesame Street with Lloyd Morrisett?
Joan Ganz Cooney
Joan Ganz Cooney wrote the 1966 study arguing that television could teach disadvantaged preschoolers, and it persuaded the Carnegie Corporation to help pay for the show.
Q 16Which segment was added to the end of Sesame Street in 1998 to hold its younger viewers?
Elmo's World
Elmo's World filled the last 15 minutes of each episode, and in 2002 the rest of the show was rebuilt around longer stories in the same way.
Q 17In which US city was Mister Rogers' Neighborhood produced?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh. While working at the city's station WQED, Fred Rogers studied at its seminary in his lunch hours and was ordained a Presbyterian minister.
Q 18Fred Rogers first hosted on camera in Misterogers, a 1960s series made in which country?
Canada
Canada. Rogers had spent years out of sight as a puppeteer until the CBC's head of children's programming persuaded him to talk to viewers himself.
Q 19The PBS Kids puppet Donkey Hodie has a name that puns on which literary hero?
Don Quixote
Don Quixote. Fred Rogers' original Donkey Hodie didn't tilt at windmills but lived in one, in a land called Someplace Else, where his granddaughter's show is set.
Q 20Who hosted Reading Rainbow throughout its original 1983–2006 run?
LeVar Burton
LeVar Burton. The show ended after funding shifted to programmes that teach children how to read, rather than why they might want to.
Q 24Which actor voices the villainous Hacker in Cyberchase?
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd. His Hacker is on a mad mission to overthrow Motherboard and rule Cyberspace, and three children from Earth keep beating him with arithmetic.
Q 25Between the Lions, the PBS Kids reading series, follows a lion family who run what?
A library
A library. The lion parents are the librarians, a frazzled hen answers the phones, and two pigeons spend their days annoying a talking statue of the founder.
Q 26Who voiced Clifford in every episode of the 2000 Clifford the Big Red Dog series?
John Ritter
John Ritter. He died in 2003, and Clifford's Really Big Movie, released the following year with his voice, became the series' farewell.
Q 27Which voice actor behind Scooby-Doo also voices the title character of PBS Kids' Curious George?
Frank Welker
Frank Welker. George never says a word, so Welker plays him entirely in chirps and squeaks while a narrator, at first William H. Macy, explains what he is thinking.
Q 28In Dragon Tales, which two dragons share a body as conjoined twins?
Zak and Wheezie
Zak and Wheezie. The show's co-creator says someone first wanted to call the two-headed dragon Snarf and Bugger, an idea that was quickly squashed.
Q 29WordGirl's secret identity is a fifth-grader with what name?
Becky Botsford
Becky Botsford. She was born on the planet Lexicon, named for the word meaning a language's vocabulary, which is her superpower.
Q 30What kind of animal is Captain Huggy Face, WordGirl's sidekick?
A monkey
A monkey. Captain Huggy Face arrived on Earth with WordGirl when their spaceship crash-landed, and the two have fought crime together ever since.