‘Reading Rainbow’ returns to a country far more hostile to books — and diversity

Once upon a time in a land of rabbit-eared TV sets that displayed four or five stations tops, there existed a half-hour program celebrating the joy of picture books that was called “Reading Rainbow.” From 1983 to 2006, host LeVar Burton made televised story time a show children clamored to see. Then budget concerns and the apparent belief that teaching the mechanics of reading was more important than cultivating a joy of reading led to the show’s cancellation.

And a sorrow fell over the land. Especially among those whose days of reading storybooks were long past. I would have loved to have introduced my daughter to “Reading Rainbow” the same way my wife and I introduced her to “Sesame Street.” But today’s return of the show, on YouTube with new host Mychal Threets, comes too late to be appreciated by a teenager who’s moved beyond, say, Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” (“Reading Rainbow” Season 1, Episode 5) and whose current assigned reading features a wild thing named Grendel.

From 1983 to 2006, host LeVar Burton made televised story time a show children clamored to see.

I asked her this week if she’d heard of “Reading Rainbow,” and she said, “Hunh?”

“What about LeVar Burton?”

“Who?”

But almost everybody in my age group who responded to my social media post requesting “Reading Rainbow” memories brought up the theme song. “The opening song still feels like some sort of Pavlovian cue,” Keturah Kendrick, a Black woman writer, wrote. “Whenever I hear ‘Butterfly in the sky’… I still want to run to the TV to see where LeVar and his friends who look like me will take me.” Willie Carver, a gay white man from Appalachia, shared an interview he gave to Young Ravens Literary Review in which he was asked for “one of the earliest significant sounds” he could remember. He answered, “It’s the first few wispy notes preceding the theme song to ‘Reading Rainbow’ — that panflute-like oscillation that pattered up and down while cartoon graphics changed the reality on screen.”

“I grew up in a rural area with a fairly homogenous culture and almost no regular experience with people of color,” Carver told the journal, “so those notes — that song! — paired with LeVar Burton smiling at me and telling me about books with diverse characters taking place as far away as New York and California left me with a faith that I would find comfort and kindness anywhere I looked. It ended up being true.”

https://compass.pressekompass.net/compasses/msnbc_opinion/what-was-the-best-thing-about-levar-burtons-reading-rainbow_msnbc_opinion

Mychal the Librarian, as Threets is known on social media, developed a following online as an enthusiastic promoter of children’s literature and an advocate for their emotional well-being. He is a worthy successor to Burton and, not surprisingly, a big fan.

“I am a reader, I am a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow so powerfully made us believe we belong in books, we belong everywhere,” Threets posted to Threads on Thursday. “I am so happy for all of us that Reading Rainbow is returning! YOU all did this!”

The episodes hosted by Threets will premiere at 10 a.m. ET every Saturday during October on KidZuko, a kids’ YouTube channel from Sony Pictures Television. “Reading Rainbow’s” website will also show the episodes.

There have been two hosts in the history of Reading Rainbow. The Legend of Literacy, LeVar Burton! And… me, Mychal Threets, a librarian 🥹🤯I am a reader, a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow made us believe and see we belong in books, we belong everywhere ✨youtu.be/e7es7qdWVnU

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— Mychal Threets (@mychal3ts.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T17:51:41.048Z

Though “Reading Rainbow’s” return is good news, Threets’ show can’t possibly have the impact that Burton’s did. Again, we didn’t have a lot of channels we could watch, so the television shows that existed reached a larger share of people. And Threets’ show won’t even be on television. It will be on the internet, where there’s even more competition for viewers and where the people who do watch shows have significantly shorter attention spans. It’s inconceivable, then, that the new show, however great it is, will be as influential as its predecessor.

I spoke by phone Thursday with Margaree King Mitchell, whose picture book “Uncle Jed’s Barbershop” was published by Simon & Schuster in 1993. The story of an itinerant barber in the rural Jim Crow South who spends a lifetime saving his money to open a barbershop of his own, “Uncle Jed’s Barbershop” won a Coretta Scott King Award in 1994. But the book skyrocketed in popularity in 1996, she said, when it was featured on “Reading Rainbow.” She said the show was “validation that ‘Uncle Jed’s Barbershop’ was a worthy book and deserved to be recognized” and that in the 32 years the book has been on shelves, the royalty check that followed the “Uncle Jed’s Barbershop” episode on “Reading Rainbow” was the biggest she ever got.

‘Uncle Jed’s Barbershop’ won a Coretta Scott King Award in 1994. But the book skyrocketed in popularity in 1996 when it was featured on ‘Reading Rainbow.’

When Burton was hosting the show, there did not appear to be many people arguing — at least not out loud — against the idea of introducing children to books by authors of different colors, cultures, ethnicities and experiences. But we have regressed as a country, and today’s “Reading Rainbow” reboot comes at a time when, unfortunately, censorship is ascendant and books are under attack.

Threets’ show will debut the day before the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week 2025 begins. Burton was the honorary chair of Banned Books Week in 2023, and he told MSNBC host Ari Melber, “When I first read ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in high school, I thought, ‘Wow, what a dystopian, wild idea that this is,’ and here we are now living in that very reality.” He said, “Literacy is an incubator for empathy, and absent an exposure to a wide variety of literature, you grow up in an echo chamber, in a very narrow silo of information and experience.”

Some people need to sit in a room and watch Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, and Reading Rainbow until they become better people.

— Ali Trotta (@alwayscoffee.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T15:59:11.229Z

According to PEN America and the Florida Freedom to Read Project, “Uncle Jed’s Barbershop” was banned, at least temporarily, in Duvall County, Florida, in 2022. Mitchell said she was never contacted or given an explanation for why her book was considered problematic but concluded that “it was just because it featured Black characters” during a time when most Black people lived on farms and under segregation. The book, she said, is about “pursuing your dreams and not giving up until you achieve your dreams.”

Though I can’t imagine Threets’ show having the impact Burton’s did, in a country where the clouds of censorship continue to roll in and governments big and small are making reading lists whiter, I still think a new “Reading Rainbow” is exactly what we need.