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Netflix Jr. pairs Ada Twist, Scientist with Raven Baxter in two videos for young viewers
The animated series about a young Black scientist, from the Obamas' Higher Ground Productions and a No. 1 New York Times picture book, premiered on Netflix in September 2021
Baxter beside the animated Ada Twist in the opening seconds of the Brainstorm Remix, released November 8, 2021. Photo: Netflix Jr. video
In November 2021, Netflix Jr. released two Ada Twist, Scientist videos with Raven Baxter on its official YouTube channel. "Science is Everywhere!" came out on November 4, and the Brainstorm Remix, with a rap verse by Baxter, followed four days later.
Baxter told the youngest fans of the show that she started out much like Ada. "When I was a little girl, I invented my own lab experiments in my house," Baxter said in the one-minute first video, "and sometimes the experiments didn't go as I planned, but I always had fun and learned from the process."
"If you've been watching Ada and the gang, you know we have that in common," she said. The two videos have since drawn more than 750,000 views on YouTube.
They arrived five weeks after the series premiered on Netflix on September 28, 2021. Netflix announced the show as the story of "a young Black scientist," an eight-year-old "pint-sized scientist with a giant-sized curiosity." In April 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that Black workers held 9% of U.S. science, technology, engineering and math jobs. They held 11% of all jobs, and their share of these science jobs had not changed since 2016.
Baxter tells viewers about her career in Science is Everywhere! Image: Netflix Jr. video
In the video, Baxter told viewers her love of science grew as she got older. "Now I'm a molecular biologist and science communicator," she said. She cast her pairing with Ada as part of a larger aim. "Ada and I are so excited to be part of a movement that inspires the next generation of future scientists as we speak," Baxter said.
She summed up the video's theme. "Science is all about having fun while exploring the world around you," she said. The video then introduced a YouTube playlist of her favorite learning videos.
Netflix called the second video "a fun, funky rap version of Brainstorm," a song from the series, with Ada and her friends Rosie and Iggy. In her verse, Baxter offers a hypothesis, designs an experiment and asks viewers to team up with Ada, Iggy and Rosie to make breakthroughs.
Baxter performs her verse in the Brainstorm Remix. Image: Netflix Jr. video
The series came from Chris Nee's Laughing Wild and Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions. It adapts books by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts. Their picture book Ada Twist, Scientist, published in 2016, debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times children's picture book list. The show ran four seasons through April 2023. It won the 2022 Annie Award for best preschool animated production and the 2022 Children's and Family Emmy for Outstanding Preschool Animated Series.
Baxter was then a doctoral candidate at the University at Buffalo, where her research focused on science communication through hip-hop. Weeks before the Netflix videos, Yahoo News covered her rap answering Nicki Minaj's tweets about COVID-19 vaccines.
Both videos are on the Netflix Jr. channel.
