Everybody in our house loves watching The Wiggles on the Disney Channel. What can you tell me about them?
—Martha Dunston, Fort Payne, Ala.
The Wiggles began as a class project in the late 1980s for three "mates" who were studying early childhood education at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Anthony Field, Murray Cook and Greg Page began writing children's songs, and by graduation they'd recorded a tape and launched careers as a singing group for the preschool set. (They were joined by Jeff Fatt in 1991.) Over the last 15 years, the globe-trotting Wiggles have performed all over the United States and Australia and released numerous CDs, videos and other products aimed at getting kids to smile and sing along to their silly, wholesome, cleverly crafted songs, such as "Toot Toot, Chugga Lugga, Big Red Car," "The Monkey Dance" and "Rockabye Your Bear."
