Who's News

"I really work on being open and sincere ... and treating the kids with respect. Kids can sniff it out when you aren't." And let's not forget another golden rule -- don't ridicule a certain purple dinosaur. Barney bashing, Burns says, "became a national pastime."

Burns, who would like to have kids of his own someday, tells us he's not only trying to talk and educate his young audience, but also to appeal to their parents -- and any other adults who may be watching. "You have to humor the kid that's in every adult."

But was it adult humor that had Burns the subject of a strange Internet hoax earlier this year? Widespread rumors that the young host was dead swept the country. Some heard he died in a car crash, others heard that he'd died of a drug overdose. It was even suggested he'd been replaced on Blues Clues by a Burns look-alike.
He first learned of the rumors from his mother, who called him from Boyertown, Pa., and "asked, quite innocently, if I was dead." Burns even went on the Today show to assure distraught youngsters across the country that he was alive and well.

Check on Blues Clues at Nick Jr.