Bring Reading Rainbow To All Kids!

Image: Wikipedia

Levar Burton loomed large in my childhood. I watched him as Kunte Kinte in Roots and adored him as Geordi in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But it was Reading Rainbow that really shaped my young life.

I loved Reading Rainbow and it really helped foster my love of reading. Though I do have to give my parents, especially my dad, some credit because my dad had a half a dozen bookshelves in our house and was always reading.

But I have fond memories of watching and learning from Reading Rainbow. I was always excited when a book I owned was featured on the show and sometimes I asked for my parents to get other books that I saw there.

I've been trying to instill a love of reading in Emily. We read books every night and generally several times during the day. She's starting to learn to read herself which is great.

I have heard of the Reading Rainbow app, but never got it because Emily was pretty small when I heard about it the first time. We have watched a few of the old Reading Rainbow episodes on Amazon Prime. We started at the beginning and they were fun but really dated.

Emily, like the rest of her generation, is very tech savvy. She is able to use my phone, tablet and video games better than I can sometimes. And she is a very early reader at this point. But she loves the story apps we do have right now. Right now we don't have the Reading Rainbow app because I just got a tablet in the last week.

When I saw the Kickstarter to bring Reading Rainbow to all kids, I had to back it. A lot of people felt the same way because it reached it's goal in less than 24 hours. I think it's a great cause to back because so many kids aren't exposed to books and reading like they should be. And the best part is giving Reading Rainbow to schools in need for free!

I'm sure everyone has heard about this Kickstarter by now. But it makes my heart happy to think about having Reading Rainbow back. It was a big part of my childhood and hopefully it will do the same for Emily.