WNED PBS is currently working on the next chapter of Reading Rainbow to reimagine the program for a new generation of young readers who consume media in very different ways than children did just a decade ago. WNED PBS will examine new ways of creating and distributing content, refreshing the format, and achieving maximum reach and impact. The reimagined series will be reintroduced through digital platforms. Deeply affected by the events of September 11, LeVar spends the day with the students.
Below are several activities educational resources you and your child or class can do together after watching this episode. In this complete Reading Rainbow segment from , legendary American folk singer Pete Seeger sings and tells us the story of a fearsome giant named Abiyoyo.
Watch as a father and son use music and magic to battle a mighty giant. In this Classic Reading Rainbow segment, LeVar Burton heads to a Renaissance Faire and learns about the entire process of making garments in days of old, from sheering, to spinning, to weaving, to dyeing. If Sesame Street taught kids the alphabet, Reading Rainbow helped them develop a love of words, paragraphs, and narratives.
Lacking merchandisable characters or licensing opportunities that boosted shows like Barney , its producers struggled to convince financiers of its importance. In , succumbing to a changing media and public television landscape, Rainbow shot its final episode.
But the show's fans—and Burton—never gave up hope. In a survey by the Book Industry Study Group, young adults under 21 years of age were experiencing a marked decline in their interest in reading.
In , 75 percent reported they read books. Six years later, the number was down to 63 percent. Captain Kangaroo had done it. It was Tony Buttino who conceived of the summer loss concept for television. When they come back to school in the fall, teachers spend two to three weeks bringing them back to their past reading level. Pam Johnson Former Vice President, Education and Outreach, WNED : The station would talk to their educational advisors, and what Tony kept hearing from professors, librarians, and teachers was that there needed to be something that explored a love of reading during those summer months.
Having that capability early on puts kids on a path to doing well in school. Larry Lancit Director, Producer : There was always interest in getting kids to read more, but this was more of a highly-targeted mission. We wanted to make reading fun for kids and encourage them to participate.
Buttino: I started looking at programs that were available to run during the summer. One was called Ride the Reading Rocket , which we aired for a couple of years starting in Liggett: There was a lot of stuff made for the classroom then, but it was not that great. It was seeding that notion. He turned us over to David Newell, who played Mr. Johnson: WNED would take some preexisting shows and basically use them as experiments.
They were all a precursor to Reading Rainbow. It was all building a case for why TV could be good for that kind of thing. WNED was like an incubator. Liggett: I wanted to do something to mirror what I did in the classroom, which was read to kids out loud, get kids involved in the experience of reading, and have kids talk to each other about reading.
Those became the three basic elements of Reading Rainbow. Fifth grade might be a little too late. Ride the Reading Rocket was not fitting the bill anymore, so I suggested we take my idea and latch it onto the summer reading phenomenon. Johnson: They compared notes and it really seemed like all roads were leading to the same thing. Different players were having different conceptions of how it might work out.
Ellen Schecter Writer : The question was: How do you keep kids reading over the summer? There were all these studies showing that reading plummeted, but not solutions.
Ganek: The idea was not to teach kids how to read, but to encourage a love of reading. Liggett: It was never about sounding out words, but a love of narrative. It was the perfect follow-up for kids who [had moved beyond] Sesame Street.
Liggett: Tony has been known to claim it was his idea, and I take no umbrage at that. Success has many mothers and failure is an orphan.
I would say I created it, but then Cecily and Twila and Larry came along and recreated it. Larry and Cecily organized it and put it together. Watching that dynamic with the three of them was wonderful. Having produced the kids' show Studio See and medical education programming, the couple knew how to navigate informational television with imagination on a budget. Truett: Tony introduced us to Twila and explained what the goal was, which was to keep kids interested in reading.
Wiseman: I remember getting a call to come meet with this producing couple who worked out of their apartment.
I went there in a three-piece suit, which is what I thought you did. They were so casual and relaxed. Tony and Cecily hired me to be the associate producer when I was nine months pregnant. Liggett: Cecily and Larry were responsible for the design of the show. They were and are brilliant producers. Ganek: Cecily was good about allowing people to speak their mind and doing the same. Schecter: An early idea was just to have people sitting around a library, but it was too static and boring.
That got shot down. Liggett: We briefly thought about putting the words on screen and having kids follow along as they were read to. We looked at Zoom. We looked at Sesame Street , of course, the giant of kids' TV. We looked at Mister Rogers. Ganek: I grew up with Mr. Rogers and even got to know him a little bit later on. He always felt it was important for kids to be spoken to directly by the host. He was a huge supporter of the show. Truett: We met with Fred, who was a great mentor to us.
We wanted to have the kind of relationship Fred had with his audience. Ganek: The formula we developed was used for the next 26 years of production, so I think we did something right. Liggett: It took about 18 months. I became sort of impossible to live with.
People were telling me to let it go. Truett : Twila was a relentless Nebraska girl with a will of steel. She was indomitable. Liggett: I had written proposals for grants and funding before, but nothing on this scale.
My big break came when I asked someone I knew at the University of Nebraska Foundation for assistance. Liggett: I went to Kellogg's by myself. I had enough of the show laid out to convince them it would be a good idea. We become the initial money to parlay that into leverage to find other granters. Without an engaging host, Reading Rainbow was in danger of being passed up by viewers in favor of more exciting programming. Truett: [The original host was going to be] Jackie Torrance, a highly-regarded storyteller.
But we also knew boys were at a greater risk of reading loss and were in need of a good role model. We looked at probably 25 people or so. Lancit: We had been thinking about—who was that guy who spoke at the Republican Convention? Scott Baio. I wanted someone sincere. In the proposal, I think I mentioned Bill Cosby. He was just coming off Roots at the time. Schecter: Everyone knew him as Kunta Kinte from Roots. He was so 'live' and expressive.
I had an affection for PBS. It made perfect sense to me, because of the reaction to Roots. You felt the sheer power of the television medium. Over eight nights of television, you experienced the transformation of what we meant when we talk about slavery in this country.
I saw a thing where he recited poetry on stage for Scholastic high school contest winners and he was so compelling. You could not take your eyes off of him.
Burton: I loved the counter-intuitive idea of it. Marbury: He was the first black host, surely. And more than being an African-American male, he was the first genuine celebrity we had landed for a public broadcasting series. Wiseman: I would say LeVar on the show was 70 percent him and 30 percent refined for the viewer.
He was playing himself, but a character, if that makes sense. Truett: No young black men were taking the lead in this kind of show. He was like Fred Rogers, talking directly to the audience. Out of possibilities for the first season, 67 were selected. While producers assumed publishers would appreciate the free advertising, not all of them fully understood the goal. Schecter: The idea was to pick a book with enough juice to build a show around.
We went to film a volcano erupting—anything dynamic to hook kids. To pick out a book, it would have to be something that just jumped off the page and became alive within the context of the show. Schecter: When we picked out the books, we went to the National Library Association to make sure the titles we featured would be available when kids went looking for them. Ganek: The first season, we had to pay for the rights to use the books. No one was going to let us use them for free.
Liggett: It was hard. That was why we used mostly unknown authors that first season. Schecter: I think there was some apprehension over how the books would be presented.
He was dumbfounded. Liggett: They could not wrap their brain around how we could take the story and stretch it over half an hour. Each episode also featured a guest celebrity reading a story. A post shared by LeVar Burton levar. It was later revealed that the show was ending for two reasons. The second was related to the funding issue, which was the direct result of a policy change that started with the Department of Education.
The key objective of Reading Rainbow was to foster a love for reading in children. When it was developed in the early s, showrunners were trying to create a program that would encourage kids to stop watching so much TV and pick up a book instead. You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read.
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