Great Googly Moogly!
Meet the minds behind Nickelodeon’s Maggie and The Ferocious Beast: Betty and Michael Paraskevas.

My Mama pals think it’s a bit premature, but I’m already sleuthing the children’s programming permissible for my little pumpkin. (The pregnancy hormones haven’t affected my Type-A tendencies!) Whether Bump is a boy or a girl, I plan on enjoying the marvelous adventures of Maggie and the Ferocious Beast at my baby’s side. What fun I had getting to know the mother-and-son team who conceived the cheery inhabitants Nowhere Land – bet you will, too!

As Mamas, we adore the fact that you are a mother and son team pairing your creative skills to introduce Maggie, her friends and their adventures to us! Did the two of you collaborate artistically from a very early age?

Michael: Mom and I were always working on something together. I have a twin sister and our mother always included us in whatever she was doing. She took us to a lot of Broadway shows over the years of our childhood and then also to a lot of backstage stuff she was involved in. I still remember meeting Mickey Rooney on the opening night of "Sugar Babies." My mother worked with producer Harry Rigby on several projects. Then, when I was illustrating for magazines, I asked my mother, who was always very funny and creative, to write a children’s book that I could illustrate. The rest is ...well... 20 books and three TV shows later... what can I say? My mother is very talented.

Could you tell us a bit about how Maggie came into existence?

Michael: It was originally a book about a Ferocious Beast who tried to eat a little pig; the pig outsmarts the Beast and ends up being his friend. It was a very funny book that Nickelodeon loved and the series was developed with that book in mind. Adding Maggie was really not a problem and only made the series better.