Judy Freudberg, who entertained millions of children as a writer for Elmo, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and other residents of “Sesame Street” for 35 years and shared more than 15 daytime Emmys, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 62.

The cause was complications of brain cancer, her sister Joan Leibovitz said.

Ms. Freudberg started working on “Sesame Street” in 1971, two years after the show’s debut, as an assistant in the music department. She became a writer in 1975.

In an interview on Thursday, Lou Berger, a former head writer at “Sesame Street,” described Ms. Freudberg as the show’s “moral barometer”; if she thought something was not right for the show, he said, she would say so without hesitation.