NEW YORK, NY.- Barbie isn’t the only childhood heroine experiencing a renaissance. Yet unlike the doll of last year’s blockbuster movie, the next pop-culture star who’s about to reemerge isn’t a statuesque blonde in stiletto heels. She’s a pint-size Latina with sturdy sneakers and a trusty backpack.

Welcome back, Dora.

Nickelodeon, the network that in 2000 introduced “Dora the Explorer,” the groundbreaking bilingual animated show about the adventures of a 7-year-old Hispanic girl, is now rebooting that hit series, which over eight seasons aired in more than 150 countries, winning multiple awards and inspiring two TV spinoffs and a feature-length film.

The new show’s catalyst “wasn’t necessarily that the first series was over,” Valerie Walsh Valdes, a creator and executive producer of “Dora,” said in a video interview. (“Dora the Explorer” continues to stream on various outlets, including YouTube.) “It was, ‘OK, how are we extending it, how are we going to grow her? And what’s the next iteration?’”

On Friday, Paramount+ will release a full season of 26 streaming episodes of the new show, which is titled simply “Dora” and which will also air internationally on the Nick Jr. channel. (Select episodes will be on YouTube as well.) An accompanying podcast, “Dora’s Recipe for Adventure,” will expand the little girl’s exploits into the culinary sphere.

The 2024 “Dora” combines old and new. The series retains all the core characters — Dora; her sidekick, the monkey Boots; her talking tools, Backpack and Map; and her antagonist, the thieving fox Swiper — while featuring them for the first time in computer-generated animation. The show still focuses on expeditions that teach problem-solving strategies and social skills, but Map now has some high-tech capabilities. Dora and Boots continue to embark on missions to find lost objects or aid friends in a magical rainforest, but the quests are faster-paced: Each “Dora” episode is now an 11-minute story. And, significantly, the series will incorporate a greater breadth of Latin music and more Spanish language for Dora.

“We thought about her as just the great communicator for preschoolers,” said Chris Gifford, another creator and executive producer of the new series. (He and Walsh Valdes also developed the original “Dora the Explorer” with Eric Weiner, who is not involved in the new show.) “And not only a communicator for preschoolers, but a communicator for preschoolers in two languages.”

For instance, the first spoken words of the “Dora” premiere are “¡Hola!” and then, “Soy Dora” (“I’m Dora”), which Dora says while pointing to herself. Boots adds, “And I’m Boots.” Whether a child is growing up with English or Spanish, it’s easy to discern the characters’ meaning in the series, which is intended to help little viewers master new language skills.

The animation also enhances Dora’s ability to relate to the audience, Walsh Valdes said. The 3D look can make the character feel more real when she leans in and asks the viewer, for example, which of the three items in her backpack will help her and Boots reach their destination.

“With CG,” Walsh Valdes said, referring to computer-generated animation, “one of the great things is that it feels like you’re along for the ride, and it could really forge that connection even more.”

Dora is becoming three-dimensional in other ways, too. In the new series, her previously unidentified Hispanic background has become specific: Mexican, Cuban and Peruvian. Diana Zermeño, the 10-year-old Californian who voices Dora, is herself the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Kathleen Herles, who played Dora in the original series, is of Peruvian ancestry and has now returned to Nickelodeon to voice the little girl’s mother.

“We have those connections to our characters,” Herles said during a video conversation. “And I think it just adds more depth. Not just for us and for our characters, but to the show, too.”

Dora’s ethnicity should also resonate with the audience. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 19% of Americans are Hispanic, as are more than 25% of the nation’s children. “Dora” now joins a television landscape that includes characters like PBS’ Alma, of “Alma’s Way,” who is Puerto Rican, and Rosie, of “Rosie’s Rules,” who is Mexican American.

“We’re not living in a world where we can say Latin culture is one thing,” Ramsey Naito, president of Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation, said in a video interview. Eighty percent of the writers for “Dora,” she added, are Latino themselves and can “contribute authentically to the stories.”

One episode, for instance, focuses on the Latin American shirt known as a guayabera, which is thought to have originated in Cuba, while another introduces alebrijes, the colorful carved wooden animals of Mexican folk art. In that tale, “The Alebrije Adventure,” the alebrijes are living creatures, and one, the jaguar Ale, voiced by Mexican-born actress Kate del Castillo, enlists Dora’s help (and the audience’s) in restoring the rainbow water that feeds the creatures’ magical tree. While those elements are pure fantasy, the term “alebrije” is real. But how to help small children remember it?

The key, Gifford explained, is to make music a language-learning tool. A difficult word, he said, “we can repeat over and over in a song, so it gets hooky.”

The “Dora” music is also intended to “be something that kids and parents would enjoy,” said Rich Magallanes, another executive producer for the series. The creative team hopes that people who grew up with “Dora the Explorer” will join their children to watch the new show. “Dora” includes music by Grammy-winning Cuban American composers George Noriega and Joel Someillan and performances by musicians like Taboo, of the Black-Eyed Peas, who is Mexican American and Native American. (He’s also a guest star, voicing the fantasy bird Quickatoo.)

“I used to watch it a lot,” Zermeño said of the original series. “Even my grandpa, he would pretend to be Swiper.” Now, she added, when playing Dora, “I can kind of see myself in her to the point where I don’t really need to act.”

Dora, however, appears in situations that non-Hispanic children will recognize, too. In “Catch the Quickatoo,” she and her friends help Dora’s abuela get a picture of that fast-moving bird by using Map’s new features, which include snapping photos and issuing alerts. In these ways the modernized Map has become subtly like a smartphone, an accessory the show’s creators were still determined not to give Dora.

“I don’t think you need one of these for imagination,” Naito said, holding up her cellphone.

“Dora” also emphasizes heart, Magallanes said. In the episode “Rainforest Ritmo,” Boots is flummoxed by a party invitation because he doesn’t think he can master a new dance. Dora sings a song about learning “one step at a time,” and helps the monkey practice while also taking him through the challenges of the journey to the celebration.

When asked whether current controversies over immigration and border policies had influenced the series’s development, Gifford noted that while preschool shows understandably avoid politics, they do offer models for behavior.

“She is a friend to all,” he said of Dora. “And Carlos Cortés, who was our cultural content adviser for many, many years, always talked about Dora as a bridge builder. She doesn’t erect barriers, she builds bridges. And that’s still a huge part of her appeal.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.