'Reading Rainbow' reaches its final chapter : NPR

Mr. Burton loves that show....a lot.

Good show.

I got tears in my eyes when I read this. I grew up on Reading Rainbow. It was the BEST children's program on tv!

What??? I didn't even know this show still came on. I haven't seen this show since I was 8. That was a whole 11 years ago.
Woahhhh!

That's my jam..used to always watch it all the time.

I didn't realize that show was even still on. Wow I remember being in 2nd grade watching that show. That had to be about 18 years ago.

Jan I admire ur tenacity in supporting the things you believe in but smile once in a while. Yes I was plugging my group and at the same time it was a bit of sarcasm ie replacing education with entertainment...

Is this really the time for advertising your group? Good show that should not be ended ( perhaps it will be picked up elsewhere?) But hopefully, parents will continue to read to their children too. TV is a great medium no doubt to teach this, but nothing beats sitting one on one with a parent reading and growing closer.

With no more reading rainbow you can always Join me on the indie music group on current

http://current.com/groups/indie-music/popular/

What a great show this is.

BA DUM BUMPD and thats this for this story.

It is & will always be THE BEST TV I ever seen !

reading rainbow was one of my favorite childhood shows. I'm sad to see it go :(

Hey, guys do like I did, donate to your Public TV station.

There better be a show to replace this one. This is a shame. America needs to get it's head out of it's ass and realise it won't be the greatest country if we keep cutting things that help us grow as intallectuals. We are becoming Rome, fat and stupid and last time i read a book about that it didn't end well.

We are fucked!

Jesus christ, my childhood is dying!

First Michael Jackson, then Ted Kennedy, and now this?

Butterfly in the sky
I can go twice as high

Thank you LeVar.

BTW, sci fi readers, his book Aftermath is quite a good read.

HE LOOKS TEH SAME

Oh no I haven't had kids yet! What will they watch?

LOVE, LOVE, LOVED that show when I was little...but you don't have to take my word for it!
;)

I grew up watching this show! My kids too! Always a favorite of mine...it will be hard to follow in it's footsteps..

:O nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Old things must die hard...........

....

.......

Wow. I'm old. It'll be missed.

Yep, I remember Reading Rainbow.

take a look,
it's in a book,
it's reading rainbow.
love it, remember it, bit torrent the hell out of it

"You can be anything....It's in book, just take a look the reading rainbow..... you can go anywhere..."
Gee I used to just sing the song to kids to cheer them up.
I loved the storytellers. This show was phenomenal, I love it.
I sometimes watched it just to hear the readers interpretation of the book. Wow.
Thomas Jefferson said,"So many books, so little time." He started the first congressional library.
I couldn't live without books. They are everywhere, in every room of my house.

i grew up in an all year round school system (LAUSD). that means 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off.

i spent most of that time (3 weeks off) alone because my parents worked long hours 6 days a week. and my siblings were older and in different schools with different schedules. and of course i wasnt alowwed to have friends over because my parents were afraid of DCFS and what they would find out.

i grew up on reading rainbow! and i can say that it has made a tremendous difference in my lonely childhood (good thing i was into childrens programming back then/ no cable or satellite). it did not only teach me the value of reading. i also learned that kids could be smart too, if they wanted to be. (what kid doesn't?)

i feel bad for the next generation of children from low income families.

things just seem to be getting worse in our country.

hopefully it will come back some day.

"don't just take my word for it"

Never knew it survived pass the 70's/80's/90's or whatever. I never seen that show in my damn life.

"The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling."

"Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that's not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do."

"Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read," Grant says. "You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."

"TV is not a tool to teach explicit reading skills. That's a job for schools — with parents doing their part, too. If they're not, Long says, children's programs are better than nothing."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112323685&ps=rs

"Parents who are using television shows are using them because they have to," Long says. "If a parent is working two or three jobs, and they have a choice between putting a kid in front of a show that will help with vocabulary, that's a plus because the alternative is zero."

I find it ironic that you don't have to read this article. You can just click play at the top and it'll read it to you. I guess that's why this show was canceled. Who needs reading anymore anyways?

Well I'm bereaved as hell. Thanks alot George W. You butffucker.

i thought it ended years ago...shit this is terrible!

that song will forever be in my head =/
reeeaaading raaaainboow!

We'll miss you :'(

And i thought the end of lamb chops was a BIG deal.... boy was I mistaken!

That show was so important to me when I was a kid!

But I guess it's time for that "butterfly in the sky" to fly away...

i protest this is one of the most important shows on the idiot box.

this is a sad day for children growing up today, and whom will come tomorrow.

That was not ONE of my favorite shows... It was my favorite shows. LeVar Burton is by far one of the best people to have ever existed... he definitely left his mark on a generation.

How sad!
That was one of my favorite shows in my childhood.

wow...sad news..i loved this show growing up, i believe it inspired me to become an avid reader,writer and imaginitive thinker..hopefully something else comes along as intellectually nursing as reading rainbow...

You can teach a person to read, but you can't teach a person to LOVE to read. That has to be inspired, and Reading Rainbow inspired children to LOVE to read.

PBS is doing exactly what schools are doing: taking away enrichment programs and replacing them with nuts and bolts that are already in place.

sad day for reading ...

Oh man, I used to love this show! Sad to see it go, I'm sure it inspired many children and adults alike!

Damn, reading rainbow was one of my favorite childhood shows, sad to see it come to an end.

This is so sad!

(Also, everyone in a certain age range who read this just started singing the Reading Rainbow theme to themselves....or maybe that's just me.)

sad...

this is the saddest news! at least there are 26 years' worth of episodes to rerun for all time.