Nicki Shoenl

At a recent meeting of The Fredonia Shakespeare Club, President Sharon Klug called the meeting to order with 11 members present. The President thanked Cheryll Rogers for hosting the meeting where Nicki Shoenl presented her paper “Reading Rainbow” and Dr. Leanna McMahon served the tea.

Schoenl discussed Reading Rainbow. The date was August 1983 and millions of children turned on their television sets for the first time “Take a look, it’s in a book, a reading rainbow…”. The series, Reading Rainbow, ran for 23 seasons and featured 155 30-minute episodes in a magazine-like format.

Reading Rainbow broke ground in how television could be used to help children cultivate a love of books. It was geared towards children in kindergarten through third grade. At the time it ended, Reading Rainbow was the third longest running children’s series in PBS history after Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It garnered more than 200 awards, a testament to the series quality and importance. Reading Rainbow won Parent and Teacher’s Choice awards, Television and Critic’s Choice awards, NAACP image awards, a George Foster Peabody award, twenty six daytime Emmy awards and trophies in acting and technical categories.

WNED-TV Buffalo, partnered with Nebraska Educational Television, spearheading the innovative series. From its inception, Reading Rainbow was a labor of love from and incredibly talented and diverse group of people including parents, school librarians, regular and special education teachers, reading and audiovisual specialists. The team of individuals working on Reading Rainbow had a mutual philosophy about reading which was evident throughout its duration. Reading is poetry. Reading is finding yourself in a book. Reading is learning. Reading is discovering how the world works and why the sky is blue and how big dinosaurs are.

Each episode of Reading Rainbow began and ended with the iconic Reading Rainbow theme song. It was one of the first all-electronic theme songs on television. The program was hosted by LeVar Burton and centered on a topic from a featured children’s book. The featured books were picture books read by famous celebrities such as Maya Angelou, Julia Child, Martin Short, James Earl Jones, and Helen Mirren. After the featured book was read, Burton would go on a field trip related to the book, exposing the children to people, places, and situations that illustrated the book’s themes in the real world. The elements of each episode were the student book reviews. The reviews were a fan favorite. Three children would each give a brief summary of a book related to the featured book and then a capsule review. The student reviews would end by saying things like “If you want to find out more, visit your local library.”

Reading Rainbow, the television program that guided generations of kids toward a love of reading, was cancelled due to a number of factors including lack of funding and a shift in educational programming. Despite its noble goal, constant critical acclaim, and adoration of children and educators everywhere the show constantly struggled to find the funding to continue. After the show’s cancellation on Nov. 10, 2006, reruns aired until Aug. 28, 2009 when it was removed from the schedule.