Wiping away my bibliophilic tears...

I just heard that today is the last day of Reading Rainbow. My response, in a word, is, "Nooooooooo!!!" My further response, in several more words, is this tribute blog post.

As a nerdy young child, and an unabashed bookworm, I loved Reading Rainbow. It was one of my favorite shows, although its premise was to teach kids to love reading, so there was a strong element of preaching to the choir. But do you have any idea how nice it is, as a nerdy young child, to have your love of reading affirmed and hear about new, good books to read? Trust me, it was wonderful.

According to the NPR article, the show's getting canned because no one's willing to pony up the several hundred thousand dollars to keep it going. Never before have I so fervently wished I had several hundred thousand dollars lying around, so that I could fund the show myself. I actually have long wanted to start a children's literacy foundation, if I ever did strike it rich, so this would be in keeping with my prior pipe dreams.

Supposedly, market research has shown that what PBS needs to be doing is teaching kids how to read, not why read. Nobody's paying me thousands of dollars for my totally non-researched opinion, but I still call bullshit. It seems to me that kids will learn how to do anything they damn well want to, so long as they actually want to. The problem, in my opinion, is not so much mechanics as it is motivation. But hey, what do I know. (Side note: you can still pay me thousands of dollars for that opinion, if you want. I have a PayPal account and everything.)

I was rather gratified to find, when I tweeted my distress, that others were as sad as I to see the show go. It's been on the air for 26 years, which means in all likelihood that I was watching it when it first started airing, as I have been a PBS fan since I was still in diapers. Granted, it's been many years since I watched it, but my fondness for the show is still firmly rooted in my heart.

This is a cool YouTube tribute that another tweep posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApLTDoJea2Q

So, thanks, Reading Rainbow, for brightening a young bookworm's days, and thanks, LeVar Burton, for doing such a great job all these years and getting kids interested in good books. You will be missed. One can only hope PBS might release some episodes on DVD so I can share the love with the kids I plan to have someday.