To Combat Summer Reading Slumps, This Timeless Children’s Television Show Tried to Bridge the Literacy Gap With the Magic of Stories

With a charismatic host and charming book readings and reviews, the hit series “Reading Rainbow” stands as a beacon of children’s literature

Kayla Randall - Digital Editor, Museums July 15, 2025

For generations of readers, four words convey what it means to love books: “butterfly in the sky.” These are the opening lyrics of the famous theme song for the beloved children’s program “Reading Rainbow,” hosted by actor LeVar Burton. PBS premiered the show in 1983, and it ran for 23 years, received 26 Emmy Awards, and won the hearts of millions. The series, like the song, encouraged young readers to “take a look,” because whatever knowledge they sought, “it’s in a book.”

As those who watched the show know, “butterfly in the sky” became the words that always preceded a good story. The words are so significant to the legacy of “Reading Rainbow” that they serve as the namesake for the 2022 documentary about the cult classic program, Butterfly in the Sky: The Story of Reading Rainbow.

In recent years, numerous reports have warned of a national literacy crisis, for children and adults alike. “Reading Rainbow” is the essential example of a show about the importance of literacy, reading comprehension and the joy of storytelling, loved by viewers of all ages and from all backgrounds.

“In terms of child literacy rates going down, that was really what ‘Reading Rainbow’ was designed in response to, and in particular the ‘summer slide,’ they call it, which is when students are out of school, their literacy levels slide backward,” says Ryan Lintelman, entertainment curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Lintelman says plenty of research confirms that, when students come back to school in the fall, teachers need to take some time to bring them back up to speed to the levels of literacy and reading comprehension that they were at when they ended the previous school year. “Reading Rainbow” was made to bridge this reading gap for children and improve their reading skills—and to be a show that kids wanted to watch.

It was known that kids were watching TV all summer, Lintelman says, “So why not do something with it?”

Butterfly in the Sky - Official Trailer (2024) Reading Rainbow Documentary

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On each half-hour episode of “Reading Rainbow,” Burton introduced the real-world subject matter of a children’s book through field trips, from going to the barbershop to visiting an orchestra in a concert hall, and then the book itself was read by a performer. Ruby Dee, Helen Mirren, Keith David, Ed Harris, Gregory Hines, Jeff Bridges and Pete Seeger are just a few of the actors and musicians who graced the show with their voices. The chosen books are childhood staples, such as If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman and Stellaluna by Janell Cannon. The program mixes the calm, steady presence of Burton with the warmth and coziness of getting wrapped up in a book. And at the end of the show, kids review books they’ve read.

For over two decades, the show achieved its goal of not only reading to kids, but also making kids want to read. In 1997, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting released a study about the use of television and video in classroom instruction. Current, a news outlet covering public media, reported that “teachers responding to the survey rated public TV programs as the best they’d used for educational purposes in 1996-97. ‘Reading Rainbow’ was named by a higher percentage of teachers than any other program.”

“I think it’s been shown to be super successful,” Lintelman says, adding that the show inspired a lifelong love of reading in its audience. “People who have been interviewed for this documentary talk about how ‘Reading Rainbow’ was such an important part of their lives and the entire generation. I count myself among them, of people who grew up watching that show and learning about new books through it.”

The curator notes that “Reading Rainbow” was unique in how it spoke about books, showing both the featured book’s illustrations and Burton’s real adventures seeing the people and places represented by the books. The show also made its host, Burton, who had been known for his role as Kunta Kinte in the 1970s miniseries “Roots,” into an icon of education. He later went on to star as Geordi La Forge in another beloved show, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” which ran from 1987 to 1994.

“Hearing the story from the people who made the show and hearing their evident passion and commitment to doing this children’s television show, every person feels like they were making a significant contribution to culture,” Burton told the Associated Press in 2024. “And they care deeply about what we were doing. I get it, I understand the importance that y’all have placed on this part of your lives, your childhoods. And I’m proud, genuinely proud, to be a part of your lives in this way.”

During the AP interview, Burton was asked if he ever thought that his most meaningful legacy, despite all his acting work in film and television, would be tied to “Reading Rainbow.”

“I’m good with that,” Burton said. “As a son of an English teacher, as a Black man, coming from a people for whom it was illegal to know how to read, not that long ago, I’m good with that.”

The story of “Reading Rainbow” begins in Buffalo, New York, as a WNED-TV program idea before it made its debut on PBS. Three people who worked on and helped make the show, Tony Buttino Sr., Barbara Irwin and Pam Johnson, collaborated on a 2024 book about the process called Creating Reading Rainbow: The Untold Story of a Beloved Children’s Series.

Working with educators and librarians on summer reading programs, Buttino led WNED-TV’s Educational Services Department at the time. Johnson was the liaison with the executives working on the show. And Irwin was an intern in that department at WNED, working alongside Buttino and Johnson. She worked on community outreach and on production of the book review segments of the show that were done in Buffalo for the first several years.

Buttino, as director of the department, led in the creation of the show. In searching for a “Reading Rainbow” host, Irwin says, “Tony knew that he wanted someone like Mister Rogers. He wanted a real person, somebody who could really communicate well with children.”

Burton was mostly known then for being on “Roots,” Irwin says. The team at WNED, who recognized his capability as a magnetic speaker and reached out to him about the job which he accepted, had found their host.

Today, Buttino is retired from his role at WNED, Irwin is retired from her work as a communications scholar at Canisius University, and Johnson is the executive director of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Ready to Learn education initiative. The trio speaks fondly of their time working on “Reading Rainbow.”

Irwin says the first proposal that WNED submitted to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the show was for one season’s worth of episodes. That proposal was rejected. But the team was told to work on and submit a proposal for a pilot episode. The pilot episode was funded and then shot in November 1981, says Irwin. After the pilot, the team did more research to put together a new proposal to get the show made.

WNED partnered with Great Plains National in Lincoln, Nebraska, to submit the new proposal to the Kellogg Company and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That proposal was a success. In Buffalo and Nebraska, test audiences got to see the show before it made its national debut on PBS.

“This was intended to be a summer series,” Buttino says. But, of course, it ended up transcending that. “People loved the program.”

Like the fans who watched “Reading Rainbow,” Irwin, Buttino and Johnson have their own favorite episodes and books among the 155 total.

“The book that I really love is called Enemy Pie,” Johnson says. The 2000 book by Derek Munson tells the tale of a boy befriending a peer who he didn’t like at first after eating pie with him. “It’s a beautiful theme about welcoming in others,” she says.

Buttino and Irwin both appreciate Tight Times, and Irwin adds Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain as another special book, read by James Earl Jones on the show.

“Stories and storytelling are so important to the human experience,” Irwin says.

In the case of “Reading Rainbow,” those stories opened diverse worlds of possibilities for children. “Offering these opportunities to meet different kinds of people, to travel to different places, to experience different things, to go back in time, to go into the future, that’s the power of storytelling,” Irwin says. “And no series did it any better than ‘Reading Rainbow’ did.”

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