RIP: Reading Rainbow

When I was little my mom ran a daycare out of her house in the summertime. With no neighbors, having kids come to our house for the day was great fun for my sister and I. Jennie wasn't in school yet and I was too young to care about hanging out with my school friends.

Every morning when the kids would show up we'd all sit in front of our television and watch PBS. As soon as Reading Rainbow was over my mother would turn the TV off and shoo us kids outside to play for the rest of the day. I didn't grow up with cable TV, a VCR, or video games.

I have always loved books and I especially loved the show Reading Rainbow. I wanted to be one of the kids who gave a short on-air book report at the end of the show. I'd see the books that other kids were reading and want to check them out of the library to read myself. What a great show!


Today marks the end of Reading Rainbow's 26-year run on PBS. Why is it ending? Because kids don't read anymore? Nope. No one wants to put up the several hundred thousand dollars it would take to renew Reading Rainbow's broadcasting rights. This is so sad to me. It's like public broadcasting is giving up on getting kids excited about reading.

Linda Simensky, vice president for children's programming at PBS, says that when Reading Rainbow was developed in the early 1980s, it was an era when the question was: "How do we get kids to read books?"

Since then, she explains, research has shown that teaching the mechanics of reading should be the network's priority. - NPR

I argue that if a child doesn't like to read they won't read...no matter what. How will PBS teach reading mechanics? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Today is a sad day for this child of the '80s.