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What is that book, LeVar?
This is "Amazing Grace."
This is one of my favorite episodes of "Reading Rainbow"
for a couple of reasons.
One, I just, I love this book, I love this character.
And "Amazing Grace" talks about what it is to be unique
and how difficult that can be,
staying true to who you are
in the face of the opposition of the rest of the world,
and I thought that was a really powerful
and important conversation to put in front of kids.
Do you want the "Reading Rainbow" treatment?
Yes.
Here we go.
"Amazing Grace" by Mary Hoffman.
Illustrations by Caroline Binch.
"Grace was a girl who loved stories.
She didn't mind if they were read to her or told to her
or made up in her own head.
She didn't care if they were from books or movies
or out of Nana's long memory.
Grace just loved stories."
Grace saw someone who could be anyone she wanted to be,
and it didn't matter
that some people said that she couldn't.
So if you liked "Amazing Grace,"
then here are three others that deserve your applause,
but you don't have to take my word for it.
Oh.
Hi, my name is Jamie Duneier.
If you're looking for an unusual story,
how about one with a kid around our age
that has a friendship with a 96-year-old lady?
This book is called
"Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge."
It took me so long to get that name right.
"Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge."
Nine years old, not a professional actor.
I got like the chills.
My name's Alisa Reyes,
and I read an incredible book called "I Want a Dog."
That's so crazy.
And when I said the name of the book,
my New York accent came out so hardcore.
I was like, "I Want a Dog."
"I Want a Dog."
I didn't want to give a blah review.
I wanted to put a little energy into it.
I kind of gave myself a little tag line.
I said, "Hello, Americans, this is Tom Puckett."
Hello, Americans, this is Tom Puckett,
and I think it's just plain old baloney
when people say that men are not supposed to dance.
And the book "Max" by Rachel Isadora proves it!
I think "Jumanji" was the,
was my second,
my second review.
And when the movie came out, I was like, "Oh, wow!"
I felt like I had a part in that, somehow.
Picture this.
Rhinoceroses stampeding your living room,
an 8-foot python wrapped around your fireplace.
Why not try "Jumanji"?
Being nine years old,
having a show like "Reading Rainbow,"
having a host like LeVar Burton,
it was even more of an invitation of like,
"Ah, I want to be on this show."
Because I'm already seeing someone who's like me,
who's bringing this into my living room.
Summertime and the reading is easy.
At least it should be
with a program called "Reading Rainbow."
"Reading Rainbow" was not about learning to read.
It was about loving to read.
This book has all the facts wrapped up.
This is a book that always gives me courage when I need it.
I've been reading a fascinating book
all about digging up dinosaurs
and putting them back together.
In fact, that's what it's called.
Whatever it took to get kids to pick up a book
was our goal.
This is truly a rare,
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
It's reading, yes,
but really what it is is story,
and because we're sharing in this moment a story,
I feel a part of something.
Today, we're in a real fantasy land
that few people ever get to see.
We showed that books could be a portal
to the rest of the world.
This is called a bajo sexto.
- Bajo sexto. - Bajo sexto.
For the kids like me watching LeVar,
for those of us who look like me,
it mattered that LeVar Burton was a Black man.
Hi, everybody!
Hi, LeVar!
Who wants to hear a story?
Me! - "Reading Rainbow"
wanted children to know
there's all kinds of stories out there,
and while it may not be stories
from your neighborhood,
it's stories from a neighborhood
you should know about.
It was on the air for as long as it was
to inspire generations of people
who are now doing amazing things on the planet.
Hi, I'm LeVar Burton.
The people who made that show
were bold and fearless.
Their love for what they were doing changed people's lives.
You never know how far out
a simple effort of love
can go.
♪ I can be anything
♪ Take a look, it's in a book
♪ A reading rainbow
Hi.
Okay, here I am.
When I think about it,
my whole life led to "Rainbow."
I have a picture memory of me getting my first library card.
The minute I found out
what a world there was in books,
I was gone.
I mean, I'm never without a book.
I started in teaching.
The first and second grade,
those kids are so interesting.
They just want to know stuff.
I read to them.
We had books everywhere.
I was dedicated to bringing joy to the act of reading,
not duress.
But I left teaching
because the school district got into a whole new thing
of testing, testing, testing kids
on these little tiny objectives.
Kids don't learn like that.
They just don't.
They said, "You've gotta conform with the rest."
I thought, there's something out there I need to do.
I didn't know what it was.
And Nebraska ETV gave me that opportunity.
They were looking for someone who knew how to write grants,
who had elementary school teaching experience,
and who knew something about television.
I figured two out of three.
Why not?
And I got hired.
One day, my boss came to me and said,
"We want to create a television show about reading.
I've been talking to WNED Buffalo
because they're trying to make their own reading show.
Let's partner with them,
and Tony Buttino can be your counterpart."
In those days, the books, librarians were like here
and the reading teachers,
and television was like over here.
People said that we were the enemy.
Perhaps more than
any other social force in history,
television has redefined childhood.
An estimated five hours a day tied to the tube.
I resent it greatly.
I resent it as an educator.
It's hard to get kids to read
when they can sit in front of the tube.
Television was something that people viewed
as a detractor from reading.
There was research that showed
that there's this reading loss phenomenon
during the summer.
Tony thought,
"If children are watching television in the summer,
hey, you have to go where the children are."
I just thought as a parent,
I had five children,
let's use television to motivate these children to read.
The target audience would have been
the first grade or second grader.
There was nothing out there
that encouraged kids to love reading.
"Sesame Street" was very interested
in preschool early academic skills.
"Mister Rogers" was incredibly focused
on social and emotional growth.
So the team constructing and creating "Reading Rainbow"
had an opportunity.
Could we excite kids about books?
I had the reading know-how,
and I'm a very good fundraiser.
Tony had experience in broadcasting,
but we needed a production team.
And that was Larry and Cecily.
- This is... - What are these on?
This is an old "Reading Rainbow."
Doesn't say what episode it is,
but this is three-quarter inch.
Do you know it's funny to think that our lives of work
could be reduced to a blue tub of plastic.
I know, it's weird, isn't it?
When we were first approached,
they said, "We want to make a kids show
that will get kids turned on to reading."
And we went...
"Really?"
My avoidance meter immediately went up
because a show about reading seemed like a bit of a leap.
But we were struggling producers.
We were in New York going from job to job
and really hadn't found a niche
and a place to really start our careers.
This was something we could really sink our teeth into.
Larry Lancit is the producer-director
of "Reading Rainbow."
Cecily Truett is the producer of "Reading Rainbow."
She was associate producer of the nationally broadcast
PBS children's series "Studio See."
Tony Buttino knew of my work with "Studio See."
Everything we did on that show was on location.
It was fresh, it was unscripted, it was documentary.
The real-world perspective of "Reading Rainbow"
came from my experiences on "Studio See."
And the Lancits and I just clicked.
I was laser-focused on getting this off the ground,
and I had a lot of naysayers too.
None of us had worked together before, right?
You're an untried group.
And Larry and Cecily,
while they had done that wonderful "Studio See,"
they weren't known producers in the system.
It was hard to find money.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said,
"Do a pilot.
We like what we see,
the rest of the money will be released."
So we did it.
Cecily and I were in our second bedroom
in our apartment in New York
trying to organize for the pilot.
We made a list of all the things we were gonna need,
and, of course, one of the things that we needed to find
was a host.
♪ It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood ♪
♪ A beautiful day for a neighbor ♪
We were looking for somebody like a Mister Rogers.
I loved the humanity
that Fred brought to television.
Children had a relationship with Fred,
and Fred had a relationship with his audience.
Listen to the swing.
Everybody goes, "You insisted on a male host?"
I said, "Yep."
"Why?"
Well, because more boys than girls
have problems in reading.
We were watching a lot of television.
Trying to look for that person.
We just couldn't quite find the right combination of-
It wasn't connecting, right?
Lynne Ganek, our associate producer,
called us up one day and she said,
"Okay, hey, LeVar Burton."
And I said, "Lynne, oh, Lynne, he's such a big star."
There are probably very few people in America
who missed the television show "Roots"
or at least saw a part of it,
and my next guest became known to all of the country
who watched him portray the young Kunta Kinte.
Would you welcome LeVar Burton?
What a remarkable story this whole thing was.
If somebody wrote a motion picture and said,
"We're gonna put on an 8-hour television show
on a best-selling book,
and we're gonna get a young drama student
and all of a sudden become a national figure,"
nobody would believe it,
and yet it happened to you.
Before I identified as an actor,
I was studying for the priesthood.
So I grew up with the idea
that one's life should involve service.
When I decided not to do that,
it was like, so now, what am I going to do?
I was at USC studying theater
and had really no intentions of becoming an actor
in television or film.
My intention was to go to New York and work on the stage,
but television kind of got in the way.
ABC was holding open auditions
and looking for young Black men.
Over 150 actors were seen.
Three received screen tests,
including 18-year-old LeVar Burton.
These are the fattest goats I've ever seen, Nyo Boto.
It was his first time before a camera.
We're not children.
We're very close to being men, Nyo Boto.
I was a theater actor,
and I had auditioned for the spring musical,
which was, that year, "Oklahoma!"
And I got the part of Ali Hakim,
the Persian rug dealer.
The Monday after we closed "Oklahoma!",
I had this meeting at ABC.
They brought me into the office,
and a few minutes later,
Stan Margulies came out, the producer.
And he said, "Pack your bags, kid.
You're going to Savannah."
I was cast as Kunta Kinte.
The story of slavery in America had never been told
from the perspective and point of view
of the Black people before.
It had always been explained
as an economic engine,
necessary.
I mean, there are politicians who say that up to this day.
For Kunta to be first young and free and unfettered
and then to live under
the most brutal oppression imaginable.
Kunta Kinte, Kunta!
He's a universal character.
To me and to a lot of people, Kunta Kinte will live forever.
In eight nights of television,
an entire country was changed.
"Roots" taught me about the power
of the medium of television,
and it was there that I really learned
that all television is educational.
The question is what are we teaching?
You know, when you think about, okay,
the enslaved peoples were not allowed to read or write
for fear of death,
because they couldn't know
about what was happening to them.
Otherwise they would come together and organize
and fight back.
To have him play that character
and then be the guy
to inspire millions of kids around this country to read,
that's some eighth-level chess happening there.
Where do you see yourself,
where do you see your career going?
What would you like to?
I'm gonna, I'd like to-
Just take it as it comes step by step?
Well, I have some plans, you know.
I have some dreams that I'd like to see come true.
I'd like to do TV, some more TV.
Quality projects, though, like "Roots,"
that are entertaining and educational.
When I first heard the pitch,
the idea for "Reading Rainbow,"
I thought, "What a great idea."
Let's use the medium of television
to steer kids back in the direction
of literature and the written word.
Because my mom was an English teacher
in the first part of her life.
Before she became a social worker,
she was an English teacher.
And I know that my life
has been immeasurably enhanced
by my love of the written word.
LeVar was out of the country doing ABC Sports.
I think it was whitewater rafting
down the Zambezi River.
I came back to the States,
and I think I went straight to the set.
Okay, everybody, stand by.
We had our host.
Okay, let's have it quiet on the set, take five.
- And roll tape. - Ready?
Action.
Oh, hi there.
This is 165 East 95th Street.
That's the place- - Excuse me, sir.
Just the place that I was-
Watch your step.
- Whoa. - Coming through.
Just the place that I was looking for.
Boy, it's hard to move, isn't it?
We shot a pilot in the fall of 1981.
This book, "Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport,"
tells the story of a little boy
who used to live right here in this very building,
then moved away with his parents.
Oh! [laughs] "Gila Monsters."
This is such a great book.
"I live at 166 East 95th Street, New York City,
and I'm going to stay here forever."
That's what I thought when I lived in New York too.
It was all about different lifestyles.
You got the kid from the desert,
and you got the kid from the city.
And they're also carrying with them
myths of those individual places.
"Seymour says there are Gila monsters
and horned toads out west,
but Seymour says they meet you
at the airport."
The idea of the show,
which was, starting with a children's picture book,
going on location
to illustrate the theme of that book.
Gila monsters really aren't as big
as people think they are.
As you can see, they're only about 1 1/2 feet long.
And then getting some kids around
to tell you about books that they've read.
We called them book reviews.
They were really book promotions.
Hello, boys and girls, I'm Afrika.
How would you like to read a terrific book?
It's called "The Big Hello."
It's about a little girl
that's moving across country to California,
but she don't want to move
'cause she's afraid she won't have any friends.
This book has a real happy ending.
That's why I like it.
That's why you'll like it too.
"Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport"
was a Macmillan book.
And so we got dressed up,
and we were gonna go see
the head of subsidiary rights at Macmillan
and try to persuade her that we wanted to do this book.
"We're so excited to tell you
that your book has been selected
to be the pilot."
And she said to us,
"Well, I don't understand
why this is going to sell books for Macmillan."
It was very difficult
to get books in the early days.
I said, "We will get kids reading more
because they will watch 'Reading Rainbow,'
and they will go get those books."
Nobody believed us.
They didn't; they didn't believe that would happen.
It ticked me off.
Well, somebody had a good sense to say yes.
But it was, you know,
seat of the pants for the pilot.
We had one idea.
You know, we're out in the desert.
We're shooting the Gila monster,
and we found this tortoise.
Let's do a song
about the tortoise. - About the tortoise
and his home, and he's always got it with him.
That relates to the story we just read.
♪ Don't have a suitcase, don't have to pack ♪
♪ I've got my house right here on my back ♪
♪ It doesn't matter how far I roam ♪
♪ Wherever I go, I'm always home ♪
♪ Moving on
♪ Moving slow
♪ Turtles go just where they want to go ♪
♪ Whenever I get tired of the view ♪
♪ I pick up my house and go someplace new ♪
♪ It doesn't matter how far I roam ♪
♪ Wherever I go, I'm always home ♪
We were trying to figure out
who was gonna write the music for us.
And we auditioned perhaps,
I don't know, six or eight different musicians.
We said, "We're doing a show about reading.
It's called 'Reading Rainbow,'
and we need a lyric and a song.
Can you do a demo for us?"
I think we kind of wanted to do
anything that came in the door.
We had no idea that this audition
was gonna turn into a multi-decade gig.
Hi, I'm Steve Horelick,
and this is Patchworks,
and all of the music for "Reading Rainbow"
is created right here.
Janet, who's my wife,
but she was my business partner and co-writer at the time,
said, "We have to create a sound that when kids hear it,
they're gonna come running to the TV set,
sliding across the floor,
in anticipation of what's to come."
We found a wonderful singer in New York City in the '80s.
Her name was Tina Fabrique,
and Janet, Dennis, and myself
came up with this theme song.
So the notes that I used were based on a A-major scale.
And now it's sustaining those notes.
The first thing I want to do is make sure
I pick the right wave form,
which was a square wave,
and the right timbre.
Change the attack and decay.
I'm going to switch the keyboard into random mode.
Here's a little tape delay.
It's starting to get there.
And a little bit of reverb.
And voila.
We have the opening to the "Reading Rainbow" theme song.
♪ Butterfly in the sky
♪ I can go twice as high
♪ Take a look, it's in a book
♪ A reading rainbow
♪ I can go anywhere
♪ Friends to know and ways to grow ♪
♪ A reading rainbow
♪ I can be anything
♪ Take a look
♪ It's in a book
♪ A reading rainbow
We finished the pilot,
and then Twila took that pilot off to Washington
to show it to the powers that be at CPB,
and we're waiting every day for the phone call from Twila.
"Have you shown it to them, have you shown it to them?"
It never came, and finally, we were sitting on the balcony,
and there was this big rainstorm
and a big rainbow came across.
- 180-degree rainbow. - Across the sky.
Sure enough, the phone rang and it was Twila.
I couldn't believe it.
We're on the air.
How do you make a show like this that entertaining?
This is an incredible show.
I guess we have fun ourselves.
We are trying to impart the idea to children
that books are fun,
and the best way to do that
is to present them in a fun light.
♪ First you need a card
♪ Your ticket to the stacks
♪ If you check a book out
♪ You gotta bring it back
♪ Check it out, check it out, check it out, check it out ♪
♪ Don't shout - You know, when you're a kid,
your world is so small.
"Reading Rainbow" tapped into the imagination.
It broadened your world, but it was still grounded.
♪ Wish for all you want
You could just sit there
and just be a sponge and absorb and go,
"Well, there's a little girl or a little boy
that looks like me."
♪ Check it out, check it out, check it out ♪
I'm not gonna be intimidated
by this library of books.
I can just pull any book down and open it up
and dive right into this world.
These are giant groupers.
And, you know, when I'm sitting here watching,
I can't help but wonder what it would be like to be a fish.
But, you know, I just read a very interesting book
about a person who loved fish so much
that was all he could think about.
It's called "Louis the Fish."
How do you go about picking the books?
It's an arduous selection.
We really have to take a look
at each book individually
to see if it meets several different criteria.
Number one, is it a good story?
We also test the books with kids.
Because, again, it's hard for adults
to make choices that kids would make,
and so we go right to the source.
I started as a teacher.
They hired me to be a production coordinator,
and truthfully, I didn't know what that was.
We would go into second-grade classrooms
and read the books.
One of the books that I tested
was by Arthur Yorinks,
and it's called "Louis the Fish."
It's like a takeoff of "Metamorphosis,"
a boy who turns into a fish.
We all loved it.
We thought it was a riot.
But somebody said, "Oh my God, what if the kids think
they'll turn into something if they like it?"
So we tested it.
"What do you guys think?
You think that if you love something a lot,
you'll turn into that thing?"
And it was quiet for about 20 seconds,
and then a girl in the back raised her hand,
and I said, "Yes?"
And she said, "Jill, it's a story."
Kids are much more understanding
and less fragile than we give them credit for.
You still hungry for more good books?
Well, here's some I know you'll just gobble up.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
Do you like monsters?
Well, I do.
I even have a couple of them.
They're my brothers.
My name's Erica Ernest.
I read "Where the Wild Things Are."
It's fabulous.
We figured that kids talk to kids best,
and that's why we decided on the book reviews.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Cecilia Bobo.
Do you have a best friend?
If you do, I think you should read the book
called "Frog and Toad Together."
The book reviews were the kids' voices.
We brought the kids in,
we read the book aloud together,
and we asked them for their thoughts.
Namaste, everybody.
And in India, we say that.
It means hello.
It sounds a lot easier than it actually is to do that
because you're talking about eight and nine-year-olds
trying to give you a coherent review.
Hello.
Go out and get this book right now
at your nearest library.
It will really knock your wits out about boats.
"It'll knock your wits out about boats,"
and that was his line.
There was no script.
There was no cue card.
There was no coaching as far as what to say about the book.
So if you need some tips on living with working parents,
this is a book for you.
Make sure and get your hands on it.
Writing that book review and then performing it,
it gave me a sense of ownership.
So read "Jumanji."
I promise you, you won't be among the bored and restless.
For all of us watching, it was saying, "You matter."
Your stories matter.
Your voice matters.
Your opinion matters.
Which means that I get to watch the show and say,
"Huh, maybe I have a voice.
Maybe I have an opinion.
Maybe I have a story."
The thing that's exciting about this show
is that you also have
some pretty big names involved in this.
LeVar Burton, you have Lily Tomlin,
you have Ben Vereen,
and the list goes on and on and on and on.
The episode I was on was called "Amazing Grace."
Now you may ask,
"Why would you do something like 'Reading Rainbow'?
I mean, you're not making any money.
You're not, you know, there's-
What is the pull?"
I can tell you why it was for me.
Because I'm dyslexic.
So I learned to read long after I should have.
Reading opens everything.
My friend Whoopi Goldberg followed her dream,
and now...
Well, she's a star.
We all agreed that we needed celebrity narrators
for publicity,
pure and simple.
We wanted good voices, of course.
"Although they bounced him and bumped him
and threw him like a feather on the wind,
Max did not fly.
He just floated gently back to earth."
We were looking for people
whose voice and personality
matched the feeling of the book.
"The Robbery at the Diamond Dog Diner."
By Eileen Christelow.
Read by Peter Falk.
I asked if I could go
to the recording
of James Earl Jones
because I just had to see him.
So we're sitting in the studio and he walks in.
Couldn't have been nicer.
And he said, "I'm sorry that I have to ask you this.
I would like to reschedule.
You can donate my fee, but I don't feel prepared.
I want to rehearse this.
I want to get my voice where it should be for this,
so if you wouldn't mind if I could come back tomorrow."
And all of us were like...
And we realized then
how important it was to the artists
to make sure that they really were capturing
the essence of the book.
"So the grass grew green
and the cattle fat,
and Ki-pat got a wife
and a little Ki-pat,
who tends the cows now and shoots down the rain
when black clouds shadow Kapiti Plain."
Once a book was chosen,
this incredible process happened.
All of us,
whether it was producers assigned to that show,
the other directors, all the associate producers,
we would all just throw ideas in
without worrying about how dumb they were
or how difficult to achieve they were.
That's how we came up with the ideas for the shows.
This place is open all night,
which comes in pretty handy
when you get your lunch break at 3:00 in the morning,
like a lot of these people do.
And I happen to know about another little night spot
that gets cooking at this hour.
It's in this book called "Animal Cafe."
"Animal Cafe." - When you're reading,
your mind fills in all the blanks and the gaps.
I mean, you're seeing pictures
and you're reading the words, or it's being read to you,
but your mind builds on this and you put yourself there.
"'Sweet dreams!'
Maxwell whispered
as he left the shop.
In a flash, Sedgwick and Casey were up and about.
'All clear!' Sedgwick called from the doorway."
Well, we had to put ourselves in those places too
with the cameras.
And we had to make it
as interesting and fascinating as possible
so that we could match the intensity of the book.
Of course, Casey and Sedgwick
aren't the only animals that come out at night.
In fact, 60% of the earth's creatures
live their lives at night and sleep during the day.
That includes owls, porcupines, raccoons, frogs,
and, of course, the masters of night flight, bats.
I'd just come out of film school.
All of my friends who went to NYU are all starting to work.
I was starting to shoot a lot of rock and roll,
low-budget documentaries,
and "Reading Rainbow."
We're about to enter Bracken Cave in Texas.
Nobody wanted to shoot this.
The bat cave was in this huge cavern,
but you had to climb down to get to the bottom,
and it was filled with, I don't know, 60 million bats,
and they covered every inch of ceiling and floor.
The walls were going like this.
Bats carry rabies, so the crew had to get,
Rabies shots.
Wasn't interested in that.
They had to put spacesuits on.
You have to wear an entire set of coveralls
and rubber boots
because living in the bat guano
that covers the bottom of the cave
are carnivorous worms
that eat a bat down to a skeleton in five minutes.
For young bats learning to fly,
the floor of this cave is a very dangerous place.
Any bat that lands on this floor
and doesn't get airborne again within a few seconds
will become a skeleton like this.
We found somebody who'd never done sound before
to do sound.
And I'm shooting a bat, I remember, getting eaten
by the carnivorous worms on the floor.
He's holding his boom,
and he's really nervous about stepping off this rock,
and we're screaming at him,
"Get down here, get down here!"
And he takes a step,
and we watch him trip.
We can see his face going like,
as he falls headfirst into the bat guano and disappears.
'Cause it's very loose.
You sink into it about this deep.
And then comes bursting out of it covered in worms
and starts trying to run out of the cave.
And we watch him and he gets about 30 feet
and just collapses.
That was it, he never went in the cave again.
I often thought that what we were doing was crazy,
but I never thought
that it was crazy because it was for a kids show.
I thought it was just crazy.
Anybody that worked with us and said,
"Aw, it's just a kids show,"
never worked with us again.
- Take two. - Everybody knows.
It took a few seasons for us to really catch on.
Ow!
Every season felt like it might be our last
because nobody was beating the door down
to hand us money to make the show.
This is a public television show.
It has no money.
We just loved it.
Now get me some more coffee or I'm quitting.
Everybody on that crew,
all the writers, producers, PAs, assistants,
everyone believed in what we were doing.
A lot of the people who worked on the show
had a background in teaching.
It was a rare opportunity
to make the kind of TV that we wanted to make.
When I came to "Reading Rainbow,"
I was a kid.
I grew through "Reading Rainbow."
And like the same way we were hoping for the kids,
you know, we wanted them
to learn about the world and be fascinated,
that was happening for me.
We were having all of these incredible adventures,
and you're seeing it as a child
because you're trying to tell a story for children.
But we were like little kids.
We used to whistle the theme
from the "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
when things were getting really insane.
Every time we stepped out into an amazing place,
we gotta print this for kids
so that this becomes part of their memory.
And if a book went to an extreme place,
then why shouldn't we?
We chose "Hill of Fire" because it's a true story,
and it's really interesting.
It's about a man in Mexico, a farmer,
who one morning goes out and his field is growing
and growing and growing, a mountain,
and then it erupts into a volcano.
We took the kids to a real live volcano.
It's unbelievable how much lava
can gush from one volcano.
And look at this.
It's only just one little spill.
We went to shoot the Kilauea volcano,
and the reason why it was so perfect for us
was because it erupted on a schedule.
We get to Hawaii,
and Kilauea was not erupting.
We shot the lava, we shot the mountain.
We shot the ocean.
No eruption.
We wrapped up.
The next morning at 5:00 AM,
the director of the national park called me and said,
"Buckle up.
It's erupting."
We got in the van
and we were driving up the mountain
as everybody else was coming down.
There were rocks flying at our Winnebago,
and there was smoke in the air.
This is a 2,000-foot lava flow
going up into the air. - Up in the air.
2,000 feet away. - 2,000 feet away.
I am standing near the top of Kilauea,
the world's most active volcano,
and as you can see behind me, she is really erupting.
It was extraordinary
to feel that raw earth power.
We took the kids right there,
where it's happening.
The more shows we did, the more episodes,
the more seasons we were on,
the more research came back
showing that there was a connection with the audience
and that it had meaning and importance for them.
- How are you? - Good to see you.
People began to know who we were and what we did.
Early on I laid down the dictum
that we were going to represent all kids.
Now, in 1980, that was not necessarily something
people thought about.
But I did and LeVar did.
Telling clever tales like "Borreguita"
is a local tradition,
and so are murals, like this one.
This instrument is called an axatse.
- An axatse. - Right, it comes from Ghana.
One of the most enjoyable parts
of Japanese culture
is the food.
In Japan, lunch is not only delicious,
it's beautiful.
I came through the back door
in terms of the writing thing
and how it all happened for me.
The honest answer is 'cause I realized
I couldn't be Michael Jordan.
You know what I mean?
And then you had to pivot, you know,
and it's like, all right, what am I gonna do?
I think I found literature through rap music.
I was reading rap lyrics as a kid, liner notes.
And you realize really quickly
that rappers are writing poetry.
No one ever told us that, by the way.
So let's catch our first story by Run DMC,
a rap group from Queens, New York.
In rap, rhythm and rhyme are everything.
It's a kind of street poetry.
I remember we first contacted a girl group.
Salt-N-Pepper.
Salt-N-Pepa.
Pepa.
♪ Salt-N-Pepa's here and we're in effect ♪
I wanted them.
I wanted girls rapping.
I thought it was great.
They were really hot.
♪ Now wait a minute, y'all
And they didn't want to do it.
And then we said,
"Okay, Run DMC, let's give it a shot."
♪ Now we're Run DMC and we like to rap ♪
♪ And the reason that we do it is to make you clap ♪
♪ I'm the king of rock
♪ There is none higher
It was so weird.
I mean, now they're like old-school rap,
but back then they were the hottest thing around,
and they were new.
But they loved reading.
Here's Run DMC telling you their story set to music.
We wanted them to write a song,
and to the day we shot, we weren't sure they did it.
Jam Master Jay handed me a cassette with a song on it.
We had to put it on a boombox.
And they were amazing.
♪ Oh, yes indeed, I like to read cause reading's fun ♪
♪ Not only me, I'm DMC but also Run ♪
♪ From the front to the back as pages turn ♪
♪ Reading is a very fresh way to learn ♪
♪ And if you look into a book, you might just say ♪
♪ I had fun just like Run
♪ DMC and Jay
♪ Uh
♪ Teamwork
All right, hold it, hold it, everybody.
Hold it, hold it, hold it.
Listen, LeVar, for that to work,
you gotta delay two counts.
You're two counts early.
If you delay two counts, the flip will work
and we'll get into "Teamwork," okay?
Sorry, Sam.
Oh hi, I'll be with you in a second.
All right, let's set up from the pyramid.
LeVar, he was really good
at most of the things he tried.
He would do anything,
except go in the bat cave.
Okay, LeVar, why don't you put on your seat belt
and your shoulder harness?
I did everything they asked.
I mean, everything they asked.
And I was game.
♪ Teamwork
♪ T-E-A-M
♪ Teamwork, teamwork
♪ You have a dream
♪ You want to make it real, you need a team ♪
♪ Working up steam to make your dream work ♪
♪ Teamwork
♪ Working it through
♪ Working together whatever we do ♪
♪ Doing it better as a team
♪ Haven't got a moment
♪ There's just too much to do
♪ My feet are really tired
♪ And my back is aching too
♪ But when I look around me, I see ♪
♪ Friends working along with me ♪
♪ I get energy 'cause I know
♪ We've got teamwork, teamwork
♪ You have a dream
♪ You want to make it real, you need a team ♪
♪ Working up steam to make your dream work ♪
♪ Teamwork
♪ Working it through
♪ Working together whatever we do ♪
♪ Doing it better
♪ As a team
Well, you know, I interview a lot of people
on "Reading Rainbow,"
and now I guess this is a perfect opportunity
for me to interview myself.
Now, tell me, do you really think
you could be the host of "Reading Rainbow"?
No problem.
Nothing to it.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
I think that LeVar...
I don't know why I looked at camera,
because I was thinking of him doing that.
Let me start over.
I think that LeVar is really good at connecting with kids.
I'm sure there have been times when you felt left out
or scared or disappointed.
But even when things don't work out
just the way you want them to,
sometimes they turn out okay anyway.
When he would start talking,
we would be shooting.
We'd be shooting LeVar, and when he'd start talking,
we all kind of go like this,
"Ohh, yeah."
Everybody gets scared sometime.
When was the last time you had to be really brave?
He knew how to look down the lens
and make you feel what he was saying.
It hurts when someone you love dies.
I know.
I've been through it.
It hurts so bad, you,
you feel you'll never get over it.
I guess in some ways, you don't.
But what helped me most was time.
Lots of time,
and some good friends who let me talk about my feelings.
He wasn't talking down to you.
He was talking as like, "Let's have this conversation.
Let me show you some of these things
that might interest you."
There's our boat, the Daunty V.
She's taking us out
in search of one of nature's most spectacular sights,
humpback whales.
Kids think they're with him.
When he'd go on location,
and we'd ask kids, "Well, what did you see?"
"Well, I went with LeVar to do the whales."
I mean, they were there, with him.
Whoa! Look at that.
If you watch carefully, probably in a few seconds,
the mouth will come right through there.
Right there! - Ooh whoa!
You can even see the mouth is open.
That's amazing!
LeVar had all of the finest qualities
of a five or six-year-old
who was just dazzled by everything in the world.
And I think that we tend to lose that as adults.
Whoa!
I've never seen anything like this before.
Even at this age, I believe that I have the ability
to experience the wonderment of life.
It's LeVar, but it's a version of LeVar
that appeals to an eight-year-old.
It's the eight-year-old me.
This is my high school yearbook.
Hmm.
Let's see, where is my picture?
There it is.
I can't believe this is me.
You know, it's interesting, right.
Because I do remember watching "Reading Rainbow,"
but what I remember most
is what LeVar Burton looked like.
There were three men in my life on television
that felt larger than life,
and they all had gold hoop earrings.
Michael Jordan, Ed Bradley,
and the last was LeVar Burton.
So when I think back to like
what I remember about the "Reading Rainbow," it's...
I remember him
and what that meant for a little Black boy,
seeing LeVar Burton on TV with a hoop earring,
meaning he was on TV as himself.
Right, that's a very different thing.
That's power.
Wow.
I think that at some point
their decision to hire me
might have, you know, bitten Larry and Cecily
in the ass a little bit
because I became very adamant
that since they had hired me, then what they got was me.
Hi, LeVar. Hi.
- Hi, everybody. - Come on in, have a seat.
We produced the pilot,
and LeVar did not have any facial hair.
The first season came around,
and I think it was Jill who called and she said,
"Okay, LeVar's got a mustache."
I said, "Well, tell him to shave it."
And she said, "Okay."
Ding ding ding ding ding.
"Hello, LeVar doesn't want to shave the mustache."
Hi.
Every season he would come with a different look.
Cecily really wanted him to look the same.
That's not the same guy who was in the season last time.
We're talking about children.
He's a host.
I just, it makes me crazy thinking,
we have three seasons and you look different in each one.
Those were tense conversations.
They were very tense.
They were not inconsequential.
And I was young,
and I was going through, you know, different fads.
I had this earring.
I had fallen in love with this woman,
and she talked me into getting my ear pierced.
At the time, it was problematic to Larry and Cecily
because they saw the changes
that I was going through physically
and the choices that I was making
as an impediment to the continuity,
and I was more interested in my authenticity.
I didn't care, you know, how anybody else perceived it.
I was very, very insistent
upon all the outward manifestations of myself
being okay.
I'd been told my whole life by society
that there was something intrinsically wrong with me
or undeserving of me
because of the color of my skin.
And I think that made me especially recalcitrant
to give in.
Throughout your life,
you'll discover your own dreams,
and as you reach for them,
some people may try to discourage you,
but don't you let them.
You need to listen to the right people,
the ones who understand and care about you.
With their help, you'll be able to hear
that all-important voice,
the one inside you.
He was right.
LeVar knew better than I did
that that would be okay.
It felt like, yo, this is a dude I know.
This is a dude that's familiar.
That's why it's positive, right?
Him reading is awesome, but a lot of us read.
So for me turning him into a positive figure
simply because he was promoting reading,
I think is dangerous because it assumes
that there weren't a lot of us reading
or there weren't a lot of Black teachers
who were doing the same things,
Black librarians doing the same things,
Black parents, Black scholars,
Black coaches and counselors.
That all existed.
Really what he was doing was saying,
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're him too.
So now what?"
Cameo!
Don't even think about it!
"Reading Rainbow" in the late '80s
had become a really important part of my life,
and I knew that there were absolutely other things
that I wanted to pursue.
♪ Oh
I love it when people discover "Word Up"
for the first time.
♪ Word up
Inevitably they'll tweet,
"I was this many years old when I discovered
that LeVar Burton was in the 'Word Up' video.
Mind blown."
Hello.
- Mrs. Fletcher? - Yes.
Yeah, my name is David Robinson.
I'm a sports writer for the "Boston Evening Tribune."
Manager.
I was still seeking acting gigs
and auditioning for acting jobs.
I don't believe that you're the killer type.
I stepped into a business
where there still weren't all that many opportunities
for people of color.
Are Black men and women getting proper roles?
Are they getting enough roles,
or is there still that tendency
that if you and I were cast in a movie
and one of us had to be an ex-con
and the other one the attorney,
inevitably, you'll be the ex-con
and I'll be the attorney?
That tendency still does exist, yeah.
Yes, it does.
It is the truth, it's a reality.
There's no sense in saying there isn't.
Is it changing at all, LeVar?
Slowly.
I am beginning to see it change in my own career.
- Okay. - Yeah, I am.
It's a slow process,
but I'm here to tell ya, I'm here for the duration.
Space, the final frontier.
Gene Roddenberry was at Paramount
working on "Star Trek: the Next Generation."
They had decided to make this character,
Geordi La Forge, the blind engineer.
They had had it in mind to cast a Black man.
I read a lot of science fiction books when I was a kid.
It's my favorite genre to read for pleasure.
And I was challenged growing up to find heroes
in the pages of those books who looked like me.
"Star Trek" was obvious
in the different approach they took to diversity.
Leave any bigotry in your quarters.
There's no room for it on the bridge.
Prior to "Star Trek,"
there were no Black people in space.
Not seeing any representation
means we didn't make it.
Black people in the future, man.
Black people in the future!
Which sounds so silly to so many people,
unless you're Black.
Uh, I guess I am a little nervous.
It's...
It's not every day a man comes face to face with his dream.
It was the first time in a long time
that I had wanted something as much as I had wanted Kunta.
I knew I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
Prepare to initiate separation sequence.
All decks report ready.
On my mark.
Now.
The immediate thought for us was,
"Oh, no, what are we gonna do?"
This is the end of "Reading Rainbow."
How can we compete with that?
So we started auditioning other actors.
I thought the show that we did
based on the book "My Little Island"
was my last episode of "Reading Rainbow."
I had had that conversation with the producers,
and I remember being on the beach at Montserrat
and doing the closing rap
and feeling very much like this is my goodbye.
Well, that sounds like the perfect note
to say goodbye on.
See you next time.
He had a perfect excuse to go do the "Star Trek"
and go, "Bye."
I didn't want to leave.
I felt that there was still work for us to do,
that we hadn't accomplished all that we could have.
In the end,
there wasn't anybody who could do what he did.
We knew it, he knew it.
We made it work.
Then we thought, LeVar, "Star Trek."
Everybody wants to be on the Starship Enterprise.
This is a great opportunity.
Hi, welcome to the Starship Enterprise,
from the television show
"Star Trek: The Next Generation."
Now, you might have seen me here before,
on the bridge as Lieutenant Geordi La Forge,
the ship's navigator.
But now let me show you something
I'll bet you haven't seen before.
The Bionic Bunny Show continues to be, I think,
the one episode out of all of them
more people call out as having been a moment for them.
Their minds were blown.
Now, one of the effects that everybody loves in "Star Trek"
is the transporter effect, beaming in and out.
How do you do that?
Then simply take regular sparkles
and dump them in a water tank and then stir it up
and then start filming it after you've stirred it up.
Look at that.
You can actually see those sparkles
in the beam-up effect.
He really worked hard with us and with Paramount
to make sure that he could keep doing "Rainbow"
and do "Star Trek."
You know, there's something else
that can help you explore the universe.
Books.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
You know, as producers, you're doing this every day,
and you don't understand how wide you're reaching.
And the Emmy goes to...
"Reading Rainbow."
And it just became a big, big thing.
Remember, libraries and TV.
You know, just brought together a lot of broadcasters
that said, "You know what, this is working."
We've been doing this show for eight years now,
and we truly believe
that there is no more important endeavor
than to support and nurture
the minds and souls and hearts of children.
Sales of children's books went up 800%
because of "Reading Rainbow."
It was wonderful.
Writers were proud
to have their works featured on the show.
Publishers were so eager to work with us.
They inundated us with books.
We would get boxes and bo-
The conference room would be stacked up
with boxes of books publishers had sent to us
hoping we'd pick some of those.
"Reading Rainbow"
was the most used television resource
in our nation's classrooms.
We had become partners
along with teachers in the trenches every day.
Once the teachers latched on to it,
that made us golden.
So we began to feel that we had a pulpit.
It's against the law to live in public places
like parks and bus stations.
So homeless people spend a lot of their time and energy
trying not to get caught.
One way is to keep moving
and always look like you're going somewhere.
That's what a boy and his father do in this book,
"Fly Away Home."
By the '90s, there were very few things
that were off the table.
We did episodes that I'm really, really proud of.
We did an episode on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
We did a show on slavery.
We did a show on incarcerated parents,
parents behind bars.
We talked in an age-appropriate manner with our audience
about things that really take place in the real world.
So let's talk about gangs for a second.
What are some of the bad things about gangs?
What are some of the things that the gangs do
that are really negative in the community?
Marquise?
Try to get the kids to do some drugs
like they been doing.
They try to get the kids to do 'em, sell 'em,
and stuff like that.
Right, so gangs aren't the only thing
that this community should be known for,
are they? No.
You have to trust yourself.
Don't, like, if they talk to you,
"Come on, let's go, you want to join our gang?",
you have to believe in yourself.
It meant everything to viewers
that these kids were the same age as them
and that they could have a sense of connection
and either relate to them
or have some degree of empathy with them.
The day you are born
is a time to celebrate with presents and picture taking,
hugs and kisses.
Here's a story about how the whole world celebrates
every time a new baby is born.
It's called "On the Day You Were Born."
"On the Day You Were Born."
By Debra Frasier.
You're gonna do a show on what?
A family is expecting a baby
they can hardly wait to meet.
I'm Kay Estes.
My husband Tom and I have three girls already,
and I'm getting ready to have my fourth little girl.
The idea from the beginning
was to join a family
who was anticipating the birth of a baby
and then see the actual birth.
We found a woman who was pregnant,
who was due to deliver relatively soon.
- Good morning. - Morning.
How you guys doing today? Good.
- So far, so good, yep. - Everything good?
How do you feel?
Good, I just had a good one, yeah.
She went into a relatively normal labor.
It was amazing,
and the director of photography, Kevin Lombard,
he managed to shoot
the only vagina-free labor
I have ever seen.
Nice job, beautiful.
All right.
Here comes Jessica,
with a little bit of blood on her head from the journey,
which will wash right off.
Oh my God.
Look at that big baby.
Beautiful, oh!
- Beautiful. - Jessica Thompson.
Jessica is a pretty baby.
We tested that with kids to see if they were upset
or got scared or any of those things.
No.
What we did get though was one southern state decided
that that just wasn't appropriate,
and they refused the show.
I always found that really disconcerting
and ridiculous, really.
I mean, we're talking bringing life into the world,
aren't we?
The new Republican majority
sweeps into Congress next week,
and one change could spell the end
of taxpayer funding for public broadcasting.
One of the things we're gonna do this year, I hope,
is to zero out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This is the most serious threat to public broadcasting
that we've had in the 25-year history
of public radio and public television.
We were always battling something,
mostly funding issues.
There seemed to be in Congress
a way of thinking that went like this.
"We spend an awful lot of money
on a lot of different things,
and here we have identified a place
where we have been frivolous."
Now we exposed case after case
of biased, one-sided propagandistic programming
funded with federal tax dollars.
There's so much anti-family propaganda on NPR and PBS.
It was a terrible time for public TV.
We really felt under attack.
My children have seen "Reading Rainbow."
You wouldn't mistake it for education.
I think that's another myth that has to be punctured.
LeVar went and spoke in front of Congress,
not specifically for "Reading Rainbow,"
but for the value of public television,
for the value of public broadcasting in general.
We're delighted to welcome you, Mr. Burton.
Please proceed. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman
and distinguished members of the committee.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is LeVar Burton,
and I am here today as the host
and the co-executive producer of "Reading Rainbow,"
a children's series currently airing nationwide
on the Public Broadcasting Service,
but more importantly and probably more to the point,
I'm here today as a parent
of 14-year-old Eian and Michaela Jean,
who was just six months a day or so ago.
The stakes were high.
The stakes were really, really high.
Congress was really considering
this harebrained idea.
Well, let me think about it.
Should public television
continue to receive federal funding?
When I ask the question,
when I hear it in my mind, it sounds ludicrous.
It's almost silly to even ask the question.
Public television doesn't try and sell our kids anything.
So you see, the only thing we're selling on PBS
to our children, Mr. Chairman, is inspiration.
Let's not make a decision that would come back to haunt us.
I thank you for your time and your attention,
and I'll go back to California now
and hang out with my six-month-old daughter
and hope like hell, Mr. Chairman,
that in a year or two,
when she's ready for "Sesame Street,"
that "Sesame Street" is there for her
in this commercial-free sanctuary of PBS.
Thank you, Mr. Burton.
The hearing is adjourned.
That seemed to quiet them down for a while.
But by that time, kids television was changing.
We had a whole new list of pressures to deal with.
A computer in the home is becoming a way of life.
Home PCs are now rivaling the TV for attention.
Computers make natural learning tools
because kids take to them so well,
often better than their teachers.
When I came on to "Reading Rainbow" full-time,
it was around 1999,
and I was thinking to myself,
how do you continue to speak to kids?
Especially as kids' tastes are changing
and as television is changing
because that's what was happening.
A six to eight-year-old in 1981 or '2 or '3
is very different than a six to eight-year-old
in 1997 or 2000.
Just different kids.
And although it was evolving and changing and working
and growing with its audience,
it wasn't fresh and it wasn't new
compared to the fresh and new shows.
"Rainbow" was struggling on PBS.
We didn't have anything to lose
so we sort of threw it all out there.
Telling stories in the documentary style for kids
is not something that is very common.
Showing real kids to real kids
is incredibly powerful.
That's what "Reading Rainbow" was about.
It's a beautiful morning in downtown New York City.
From the way things look, it's a typical day
in a typical neighborhood.
But this neighborhood isn't typical at all
because right behind me is what they called Ground Zero.
It was here that on September 11th, 2001,
a terrible tragedy happened.
Two planes crashed into the World Trade towers
that used to be right there.
9/11 was devastating.
It was a devastating time for all of us,
and we were acutely aware
that everything that was happening in the media
was being spoken to adults,
and nobody was speaking to the kids.
We're "Reading Rainbow."
We're the honest, sincere, trustworthy voice.
Not only do we have to talk about it,
we have to let kids talk about it.
The idea was to go into the school
that was closest to Ground Zero,
as that community of children, teachers, and parents
tried to pick up the pieces.
Many of them had to leave their homes
and live with relatives
or move away altogether.
I mean, some of them lost,
lost friends and family.
So they were finally being welcomed back
to their original school.
I wanted to talk a little bit about
what happened on September 11th.
Is that all right with you guys?
Yes. - Yeah.
Right out the window there, you could see the towers.
What was it like for you guys on that day?
My friend's dad all of a sudden came running, saying,
"Oh my God, there's something happened really scary,
and there's this plane that crashed into the Twin Towers."
It was just scary 'cause I saw like
lots of debris coming out and I saw the fire.
I kept saying to myself that it's gonna fall down,
it's gonna fall down,
and he kept saying, "No, it's not,"
and then like a few seconds later,
it just fell right down,
and I was stuck in a whole crowd of people.
The book we selected
was a book called "The Tin Forest,"
which is about taking something
that feels like it's broken and in disrepair
and bringing new life to it.
For us, that was the story we wanted to tell.
It's a message of hope,
which I'm big on.
The time that we spent with that community
was really, really powerful.
Because everyone in America was feeling
and processing the impact.
A lot of my friends tried to comfort me,
and I changed a little bit.
Now, when people
are like sad or something happens,
I try to help them even more than I did before.
I feel proud of that.
- Can we have a picture? - Oh, sure.
To see that sense of resilience coming from kids,
it seemed to me that they were so much stronger than,
and dealing with it so much better
than so many adults around them were.
And they were still in pain.
So tell me about what it's like being back here now.
Feels like good to be back in our school.
Made me realize how much I took for granted
for all the good things that we had in PS 234.
And because of just so many people trying to help us,
we're okay and now we're even better than we were before.
The producers of the series
thought it would be really great
if the kids could write a song about
what it feels like to be back,
and so they asked me to do that with the kids.
♪ We are really thankful
We could say we're okay.
We never really knew
we were this strong to pull through it.
We're really happy we're back where we belong.
♪ We're back where we belong
They really were expressing their feelings.
Their enthusiasm was like,
was really inspiring.
♪ Our hearts are feeling free now ♪
♪ And with our smiles we show
♪ We're back where we belong
What we transmitted in those shows
was an awful lot of emotion,
an awful lot of information about
what it means to be a good person,
what it means to be a human being
in this modern world.
Every actor dreams of being in the spotlight,
but one young actor discovered
that it takes more than talent to get here.
Her story is in this book,
"Amazing Grace."
"One day, Grace's teacher said
they would do the play 'Peter Pan.'
Grace knew who she wanted to be.
When she raised her hand,
Raj said, 'You can't be Peter.
That's a boy's name.'
But Grace kept her hand up."
"When Grace got home, she seemed sad.
'What's the matter?' asked Ma.
'Raj said I couldn't be Peter Pan because I'm a girl.'
'That just shows what Raj knows,' said Ma.
'A girl can be Peter Pan if she wants to.'"
Oh, I love this.
And I have a long list of really pretty sexist things
that I've endured in my life.
Was told I couldn't be a principal
because women leave, they leave school too soon
'cause they have to run home
and make a meal for their family."
Well, I don't have kids, so how does that matter?
"Well, I don't know," said the superintendent.
"I don't want another woman principal."
Said this to my face.
The principle behind the No Child Left Behind Act
is to set high standards, believe every child can learn,
and measure to see if we're getting results.
No child left behind.
Every child's left behind
when you're making testing the be-all, end-all.
That was the beginning of the end, yeah.
It was almost like my school all over again.
"No, you're not teaching the right way."
I can show you.
We have data to show
that comprehension skills have improved
along with the love of reading.
And they go, "Well, that's it.
Love of reading, that's not measurable."
We lost our PBS funding
because we were not seen as, quote, "back to the basics."
The other reason I think it became hard
to raise money for this show
is because there was nothing for us to sell.
"Sesame Street" made millions every year
from the merchandise.
But it was very tough for "Rainbow."
We raised 42 million over the 26 years.
But 2006, when we went off-air,
was the beginning of that really bad economic period.
Finally ran out of funders.
To have the rug pulled out
from underneath all of us
was really devastating.
I had a very hard time saying goodbye to people.
In fact, there are people today
that I still have not said goodbye to.
I feel like if I could go back and change anything,
I would change that.
I would want to tell them
how meaningful it was
to work with them
and learn from them
and create with them.
It was hard to leave.
It was hard.
Did you feel that way?
I did, of course I did.
When it ended, I got depressed.
I really did.
Yep.
Don't know if I can talk about it.
People will tell you when they get depressed,
they kind of don't know it in a way.
You know, you don't want to do anything or go anywhere.
And it took me a little while to figure out I needed help.
I went to a really good counselor.
And she was wonderful.
She also loved "Reading Rainbow," which was good.
And she so empathized with my grief.
'Cause I was grieving.
She helped me see that, you know, life was not over,
and I did have at that point
the opportunity to teach at Marymount Manhattan College,
and that was a saving grace.
I mean, it allowed me to go to my roots,
which was teaching.
The show's legacy is really,
it's left a whole generation of kids
with a better understanding of the world.
We learn best through stories.
Beginning, middle, and end,
during the arc of life,
we process information differently
when it's touching our heart.
And books have a way of doing that when you're a kid
that other things can't do.
"Reading Rainbow" came around at a time of my life
where it was,
it was helpful to be part of something like that.
As an adult, I'm a member of the LGBTQ community.
Didn't know that at nine years old,
but my peers did.
"Reading Rainbow" was very clearly all about
making people feel warm and accepted
at a time when I personally didn't feel that way.
I think it was about being yourself.
Reading does help you discover yourself,
your hobbies, your interests.
Take it from me, sports fans, this is a dandy book,
and you can find it at your own library.
For me, now I'm in radio news,
and I'm telling the world what's going on in Buffalo.
I started acting professionally around seven years old.
Being a part of children's programming,
I can share this with my child.
I can share this with nieces and nephews,
and that's what I love about what I do.
It led to me being a professional child actor,
moving to L.A., and being in the film industry
and becoming a director and a producer.
I think "Reading Rainbow" just did such a great job
of being safe for kids,
while also empowering those kids.
Beyond it being a great adventure,
it was good for people.
I have a resume
filled with all these movies and television shows,
and at the bottom it says "Reading Rainbow,"
and that's the first question I get.
"You did 'Reading Rainbow'?"
Oh, it's one of the things I'm proudest of.
When I started working on "Reading Rainbow,"
I was a production intern.
Today I'm the chief creative officer
at Fred Rogers Productions.
This work that we do,
the intention that we put into it,
the thought we put into it
has real dividends for viewers.
I am the current National Ambassador
for Young People's Literature,
which for those who don't know
is basically the laureate of children's literature.
Like there's so much excitement
and galvanization around reading
that it's almost like a groundswell.
So the question is,
do we need a "Reading Rainbow" today?
Of course.
Well, I think to get kids to love reading today
redounds back to us as adults,
parents, teachers,
aunts, uncles, grandparents.
You know, you can adopt the "Reading Rainbow" approach.
Watch something together.
Find a movie or a show that is based on a book,
and then go get that book.
And then do stuff that interests you
about the book.
It just is a way of exploring
more in your life that relates to literacy.
The reading and the books is wonderful,
but I think the impact that LeVar had
on the audience
over years of being there
and being who he was,
these are his children.
There are wonderful things
about growing up with people who care about you.
- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - Aren't there?
And you have shown so much care
to so many people in this life.
Thank you, Fred, thank you.
And I am grateful to be able to call you my friend.
Good things work both ways.
When people of color
say that LeVar was like Mister Rogers,
what we're really saying is that we knew LeVar loved us.
We knew.
We knew by hearing his voice, seeing his face,
that LeVar loved us.
I've heard countless numbers of times from people
that I was the first
and, for a while, the only Black person
they ever encountered in their lives.
So I think that part of the legacy is normalizing
the presence, the non-threatening presence
of a real Black man on TV.
Please welcome back
to the show LeVar Burton!
Man, what a life you've lived.
Your journey keeps on moving.
Your story keeps on being almost rewritten.
A special honor today for a Sacramento native.
The city will be declaring officially
LeVar Burton Day today, June 11,
and they're even naming a park after him.
So this is "The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm,"
by one of my favorite authors, LeVar Burton.
It turns out there are a lot of adults
who want LeVar Burton to read to them.
I'm LeVar Burton, and this is "LeVar Burton Reads."
But more than anything,
it's the love of reading
and how we encouraged the relationship
between kids and the written word
that is our ultimate legacy,
that we turned kids who could read into readers for life,
and, [sighs] what's better than that?
I always get nervous playing in front of people.
Isn't that funny after all these years?
♪ Butterfly in the sky
♪ I can fly twice as high ♪ I can go twice as high
♪ Take a look ♪ Take a look
♪ In a book ♪ It's in a book
I'm not gonna sing, forget it.
♪ Take a look ♪ Take a look
♪ It's in a book ♪ It's in a book
♪ A reading rainbow ♪ A reading rainbow
♪ I can go anywhere ♪ I can go anywhere
♪ Friends to know and ways to grow ♪
♪ A reading rainbow ♪ A reading rainbow
Oh, I'm not gonna try the high note.
♪ I can be ♪ I can do anything
I think it's be anything.
Yeah.
- Isn't it? - "I can be anything."
♪ Take a look ♪ Take a look
♪ It's in a book ♪ It's in a book
♪ A reading rainbow
And then it goes,
♪ It's Reading Rainbow ♪ It's Reading Rainbow
But it also goes,
♪ It's Reading Rainbow
Right? Ah, it's great, it's classic.
♪ A reading rainbow
♪ I can
There are stories everywhere you look,
if you look in the right way.
♪ Take a look, it's in a book
A good book can send your imagination soaring.
♪ A reading rainbow - Come on now give me my book.
♪ A reading rainbow
I'll see you next time.
♪ Teamwork
♪ T-E-A-M
♪ Teamwork, teamwork
I get a call from Jimmy Fallon's producer.
"We'd like to license the 'Reading Rainbow' theme song.
Jimmy's gonna do this thing where he...
He's gonna be Jim Morrison of the Doors."
Right, and I'm going, "Okay..."
♪ Butterfly in the sky
♪ I can go twice as high
I love the version
of Jimmy Fallon doing it as Jim Morrison.
♪ Reading Rainbow
♪ Yeah