Emily has a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi, MS, and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from GCSU in Milledgeville, GA, home of Flannery O’Connor. She spends her free time reading, watching horror movies and musicals, cuddling cats, Instagramming pictures of cats, and blogging/podcasting about books with the ladies over at #BookSquadGoals (www.booksquadgoals.com). She can be reached at emily.ecm@gmail.com.
After nearly two decades, Reading Rainbow is finally back, and LeVar Burton is handing over the torch to Mychal Threets, a library advocate on social media and a librarian in Solano County, CA. In an Instagram post announcing the reboot, Threets writes, “I was raised on Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton is my hero. I am a reader, I am a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow so powerfully made us believe we belong in books, we belong everywhere.”
The original Reading Rainbow series ran on PBS for 26 years with host LeVar Burton. Burton is an actor, director, and long-time literacy advocate. This year, he was named ABA’s Indie Bookstore Ambassador for 2025-2026. Despite all of Burton’s many other projects, Reading Rainbow remained a huge priority for him, often adjusting his filming schedule on Star Trek: The Next Generation to make sure he had time to film the children’s show. If you want to know more behind-the-scenes information about the original Reading Rainbow, be sure to watch the documentary Butterfly in the Sky, which is now available to stream on Netflix.
A little over ten years ago, LeVar Burton set up a Kickstarter campaign and tried to reboot Reading Rainbow himself. But the project got caught up in legal challenges with PBS that ultimately ended in a settlement in 2017. For a while, it looked like Reading Rainbow would forever remain in millennial nostalgia purgatory.
But now, Reading Rainbow has finally returned, this time to KidZuko, a children’s YouTube channel run by Sony Pictures Television. You can watch the first episode now! The project is produced by Embassy Row in partnership with Buffalo Toronto Public Media. It will also feature many celebrity guests, including John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Gabrielle Union.
Aside from having a new host, much of what you know and love about the children’s show has not changed. There is a rerecording of the classic Reading Rainbow theme song. And the focus of the program will continue to be on encouraging children to read, with just a few modern touches. Including a new trivia section!
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Mychal Threets is a huge fan of the original award-winning program and the show’s original host. In fact, in another Instagram post, Threets joked, “If you’re upset because I’m not LeVar Burton … GET BEHIND ME!” For Threets, the opportunity to host the show is a dream come true. “I honestly thought they were lying when they first reached out to me, that it was all a trick,” Threets said in an interview. “I was like, ‘OK, I’ll play along.’”
But the show and its new host are both very real, and you can watch episodes now on KidZuko! New episodes will premiere every Saturday at 10 a.m. ET on the KidZuko YouTube channel, and you can also check episodes out on the official Reading Rainbow website.
English (US) · 