VIDEO: LeVar Burton Wants to Bring Back 'Reading Rainbow'
UPDATE:
READING RAINDBOW IS BACK! Yes, LeVar Burton has reached his goal thanks to education/good TV enthusiasts around the world:
Post by LeVar Burton.You can also watch video of the team's touching reaction to hitting the goal by clicking here.
So yeah, time to celebrate! The original story follows below...
Lamenting the lack of Reading Rainbow to inspire this grammatically uneven generation to get its read on? Well, LeVar Burton has got ya covered.
Burton has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $1 million dollars to resurrect Reading Rainbow online. The original show ran from 1983 to 2006, and continued in reruns until 2009, but it's been a long, Reading Rainbow-less five years ever since.
This Kickstarter campaign would allow for the development of a new version of the series, which would provide universal access to any kid with an internet connection. In addition, Burton intends to offer a "classroom version" of the show for teachers, which will run concurrently with his not-for-profit initiative, which would give away copies of Reading Rainbow to low income schools, free of charge.
Donating to the Kickstarter offers a series of rewards incentives, including the chance to have dinner with Burton, having him record your outgoing voicemail, having him read your family's favorite stories to them, and even getting the chance to wear Burton's iconic Star Trek visor, among other gloriously surreal incentives.
"Together we can create and deliver a proven tool for encouraging the love of reading to millions of children," Burton says in the official Kickstarter campaign launch video (embedded below). "We can genuinely change the world, one children's book at a time."
It certainly helps that Reading Rainbow has already proven it can work in the present technological landscape, with the release of an app that has become the #1 educational app in the world. So why not take it to the next step? Now, I don't mean to suggest that the lack of a show like this is why youth grammar has gone to pot (social media and online message boards mostly take care of that), but it wouldn't exactly hurt to have Reading Rainbow back on the airwaves. So check out the full video below (complete with an awesome cameo for Star Trek: The Next Generation fans), and donate to the Kickstarter campaign here.
Via: The Wrap