Bring Reading Rainbow Back | Hacker News Reader

Bring Reading Rainbow Back

kickstarter.com

374 pointsoddevan85 comments

I once met LeVar at a bar at a restaurant. As a fan of Star Trek, I wanted to go up to him, but figured he must get bothered by a lot of intense trekkies so I broke the ice with a conversation about Reading Rainbow.

He talked about Reading Rainbow with me for a good 15 minutes straight. He was unbelievably proud and passionate about the work he did on that show, and so I'm very pleased to see this video today.

Proof https://twitter.com/dmitric/status/405038964001996800

LeVar is a class act. Read the rewards on that Kickstarter page. The rewards are filled with LeVar's time. He obviously really believes in this; otherwise I don't think someone of his fame would be willing to record 150 personalized class greetings, 150 personalized incoming voicemail messages, 25 ten minute video chats, etc, all the way up to flying out to a school of your choice to do an assembly.

This will meet its goal today which is good because I've had the theme song of the show in my head since reading this article.

"This will meet its goal today which is good because I've had the theme song of the show in my head since reading this article."

I haven't been keeping close track of the exact times but I think it's $150,000 in the last hour or so (about $12K just in the time I took to write this!), and the word has probably only just begun to spread (HN is reasonably leading edge for this stuff). I think this is a serious candidate for biggest Kickstarter ever... this is exactly the sort of thing where Kickstarter allows you to convert your highly-diffuse "good reputation" into cash for a cause, and whereas some of the previous people who did that were still pretty niche video game creators who still raked in single-digit millions, well... how many people know Reading Rainbow as compared to "The guy who did Wasteland"? (No offense intended, Brian Fargo, sir. I bet you'd know what I mean.) This could easily go double-digit millions, IMHO. Especially if this hits as a human interest story on national news, which were I them I'd be looking to shoot for.

They better get those stretch goals they say they have ready for posting...

Edit: Kept track for ten minutes, from $286,533 to $330,317. That comes out to ~$4,000 per minute. At that rate it's 3 hours to one million, and I'd bet on acceleration rather than deceleration....

Further edit: Larger baseline of 48 minutes, about $2.5K/minute. Funding is four hours away at that rate, but I still bet there's another wave of people who haven't heard.

I checked the page about an hour ago, and it was at about $180k, I just went back now to watch the video and it's now $250k and actively rising as I watch the video! I'm going to say this will definitely destroy its goals. :)

That is a helluva signature.

I might lose all my karma points for posting this but: LeVar Burton was on Star Trek? I guess I am not much of a geek. :)

Yes, he played Geordi La Forge on ST:TNG. It's been decades but as I recall, there was even a crossover episode of RR where they went behind the scenes and showed him in costume, how the transporter effect was done and so forth. I still remember it vividly.

He was Geordi LaForge (the guy with the visor) on Star Trek: the Next Generation.

I observe that of all the things I did with my kids when they were growing up, reading to them every night has had the most profound impact. Early in their lives they liked being read to because it was 'time with mom' or 'time with dad', later when they were early readers, it was a way to 'be the mom' and read to us. And of course once they became facile readers it took them to places and introduced them to people they would never have met in their day to day lives. To this day I have fond memories of my daughter correcting errors in Egyptian mythology on Star Gate because she had absorbed a giant tome on it in her fascination with the stories.

If you have kids, read to them, if they have heard the story before and are bored ask them what the characters in the story are thinking, if they feel like they know that ask them how the story might go differently based on different outcomes. Get them reading, and thinking about what they are reading, and be tolerant of them sneaking a light under the covers so they can finish a book.

Anecdote is not data.

Here's data:

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/research/rea...

Key Findings

* Reading to children at age 4-5 every day has a significant positive effect on their reading skills and cognitive skills (i.e., language and literacy, numeracy and cognition) later in life.

* Reading to children 3-5 days per week (compared to 2 or less) has the same effect on the child’s reading skills at age 4-5 as being six months older.

* Reading to them 6-7 days per week has the same effect as being almost 12 months older.

* Children read to more frequently at age 4-5 achieve higher scores on the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests for both Reading and Numeracy in Year 3 (age 8 to 9).

* These differences in reading and cognitive skills are not related to the child’s family background or home environment but are the direct result of how frequently they have been read to prior to starting school.

I wonder whether this is better than talking to children for a similar, blocked off period of time every day.

I can think of reasons it might be better and reasons it might be worse.

Talking is great, but often constrained to the limits we set ourselves (our town, our experiences, our acquaintences) but reading is not bound by our imagination, only by the authors. Helps us step out of our comfort zone.

For sure. On the flip side, talking can be more interactive (which is probably good but maybe it's not), and stretching our own imaginations is worth doing - most people can probably come up with stories with enough creativity to entertain a four-year-old, particularly if the adult has been doing some reading.

But then, of course, building positive associations around books is doubtless valuable in our current society.

Lots of great arguments on both sides. I'm certainly not going to forego reading to my children. I'm just floating a perspective I found interesting.

Thanks for the data. I'll back it up with a personal anecdote: I was at least a grade if not 2-3 grades ahead of my class by the time I got to kindergarten. My parents (and the full-time babysitter) read to me. I had "Goodnight Moon" freaking MEMORIZED from how many times it was read to me; the actual reading came soon after.

I have two sons, 6 and 3, and my wife and I read to them every night. My 6-year old seems a little behind when it comes to reading, at least from what I would expect.

He attends a Montessori kindergarten and scores fine on the reading tests they administer. The school seems to put more emphasis on mathematical concepts at this point and I'm pretty amazed at what he's picked up so far. So overall I'm not too concerned and I think at some point a flip will switch and his reading will pick up.

He definitely enjoys us reading to him, but is pretty reluctant when we ask him to read so we don't push it. He really enjoys non-fiction books (e.g NatGeo books on animals) and things like The Magic (School Bus|Tree House). It's fun to hear him recite facts he's learned. I'm definitely looking forward to getting to some of the books I read as a kid (Chronicles of Narnia, The Great Brain, Encyclopedia Brown).

If I may chime in with my own anecdote:

My Dad reading to me as a kid are the most cherished memories I have. I'll never forget how wonderful it was to sit on the floor with my brothers while my dad settled into hid dads big old rocking chair to read to us.

My dad has always been a busy guy, so it means all the more to look back at my life and realize that my dad set aside 2+ hours a night just to read to me and my brothers for nearly 5 years. This display of consistency and loyalty to his family makes me emotional even now just thinking about it.

Additionally, the books my Dad read really helped me connect with him. He read to us the same books he read as a kid: A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, all of Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan, and many more. Having been exposed to the same media, it helped my brothers and I relate to our dad, and makes our relationship stronger to this day.

Read to your kids. It's an easy "parent-child" activity, and if you start with material that's interesting, you'll both enjoy it.

When friends that are having their first child ask me for advice I always tell them to do the following from day one:

1. Eat dinner together every night.

2. Read to them every night.

This is great to hear, thank you for posting this, and a huge thanks to the other posters who backed this up with data.

One question - how did you choose which books to read to your children?

I can attest to the effectiveness of the iPad app on my 5 year old. This app stimulated her interest in reading even more than us reading to her every night. She now reads at close to a 2nd grade level.

I was amazed to find out that she had been discovering books via the app completely on her own. She would have the app read a book to her, then turn off the auto-reading and learn to read it by herself. Now she uses the app to read to her little sister.

Kudos to Levar Burton and all those involved in bringing Reading Rainbow to the next generation on a new medium!

"1 out of every 4 children in America will grow up illiterate"

Is that really true? According to Wikipedia, 99% of the U.S. population is literate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_r...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy indicates ~20% of Americans are functionally illiterate.

There is a more nuanced view in the full Wikipedia page on the topic [0]. The CIA World Factbook number quoted is only for those who have had over 5 years of education (which is hopefully almost everybody) and they probably have a fairly low bar for determining literacy (I would bet nothing more than a questionnaire response).

Other studies have indicated a much lower literacy rate, right about the 75% level, depending on how strict you want to be about things like vocabulary and comprehension.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

It is likely from here.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69

"Twenty-two percent of adults were Below Basic (indicating they possess no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills) in quantitative literacy, compared with 14 percent in prose literacy and 12 percent in document literacy."

Being a foster parent there is also communication illiterate!

Took me 6 years to get my oldest daughter to stop saying like every third word! Then she went off to college and she got worse!! Thanks high education!!!

Speaking in an established sociolect is not an instance of communication illiteracy. Valleyspeak has been around for decades, and isn't going anywhere.

Glad to see them working to promote reading! Though I wonder...

Why didn't they start with the web to begin with? You can use a web-based solution on a tablet (given a decent design), but you can't use a tablet-based solution on the web. Now they're trying to fight that 'limitation.'

I understand the 'novelty' and the sheer boom of tablets at the time and the better physical mapping from tablet experience to reading a book, but technologically there's doesn't seem to be much of a reason for them going with an iPad app first. Possibly offline support (valid) or performance (shouldn't be a problem...). There's probably a much more practical answer such as: their technical team had experience in app development OR maybe Burton just really liked his iPad and that's where the movement started.

On another note, I loved the show growing up and like they're trying to continue it. I'm a bit conflicted about the subscription part of the service. I want it to be sustainable, but wish there was a larger free offering. Maybe latest content is free, archived content requires a subscription (ala Hulu)? At least they'll offer it for free to needy schools that's nice.

if this were a kickstarter to public domain all of reading rainbow. I would gladly donate, but to fund yet another closed garden that I would need a subscription for is a non starter for me. Best Of Luck to those who back it.

I heartily endorse your concern, but I still donated.

Excited to see this! I have such fond memories of watching Reading Rainbow.

I would love to see a similar kickstarter for other shows I also enjoyed - The Magic School Bus first in my mind. I just rediscovered all the shows on Netflix and I've been watching all the episodes.... I _just_ discovered that a lot of the guests on the show are celebrities like Dom DeLuise, Elliott Gould, Alex Trebek and more, and I can't find another show quite like it. It dates itself here and there - like the series finale was about computers and features floppy drives - but The Friz is unparalleled on so many levels. She was a great role model while I was young.

My second choice after Reading Rainbow would be Square One. I had only watched it between the ages of five and nine, but it literally put me three years ahead in mathematics during elementary school. (Helped along by a fantastic teacher too.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_One_Television

More of my personal philosophy has been shaped by Weird Al Yankovic's song "Patterns" (first seen on Square One) than I should probably admit. ;)

I really, really, wish I could buy this tv show. Is it still broadcast anywhere?

I have a three year old who loves The Magic School Bus. If I'm not around and she's watched it without me I'm always surprised with the things she remembers from it that she's able to talk to me about.

I watched a lot of Reading Rainbow as a kid. I loved it, but I was already an avid reader.

Great cause that I'm happy to support. Now I just wish somebody would bring back 3, 2, 1 Contact! and Mr. Wizard (ancient HERO robot and all).

3, 2, 1 contact was sooo good. Mathnet? ^_^ & Mr. Wizard - my little elementary school mind was blown when he showed me water isn't wet.

Mathnet was a segment on SquareOne. I enjoyed that as well.

I'd be behind a 3-2-1 Contact kickstarter... figure out who owns the rights and lets make it happen :)

I remember going to the library when I was a kid to pick up copies of books I saw on this show. I had no idea it had such a long and successful run; I hope they succeed in continuing it.

How effective do people think this will be as a way to help students in foreign countries learn to read English as a second language? Specifically in countries where the school system mandates learning English (ex: Japan).

Of course, I'll be trying out the app myself if I can to see what it's like, but I'm interested to hear from people who have used their existing app for a similar purpose. I'm trying to decide if that $5000 reward is worth it (it would be a hell of a chunk of my savings but I love the students at my school).

I had the good fortune to see Levar Burton receive award for children's media at my university. At the end of the ceremony, he brought two dozen children from an associated preschool up on stage and read them a story (I think it was called "Enemy Pie".)

I can say without exaggeration that it was the best public reading of anything I've seen in my life. Watching children so deeply engage with an icon that they probably don't even recognize was a wonder.

Ironically I'm probably reading the kickstarter page poorly. Are they raising money to buy the license of old episodes, or to make new ones?

Neither.

They are raising money to create a subscription web service of their current subscription tablet app.

I believe it is to make new ones and/or extend the current iPad app to the web to reach more people.

As a kid I never liked this show. I loved reading books. I always thought, "why do I want to watch tv about reading books?"

Only "underprivileged" schools will get the content for free, which implies they intend to sell the software to schools, which implies business.

You're not supposed to be able to kickstart a business. You shouldn't get a pass just because you're Reading Rainbow and levar burton.

What? "kickstart a business" is the entire point of kickstarter.

You can kickstart a product like the Veronica Mars movie or Bee and Puppycat show. This looks like a product to me, a web serial. It just has ancillary aids for classroom presentation.

What do you mean "you're not supposed to"? People can and will spend their money however they'd like. They've raised more than $400k already, obviously at least a few people disagree with you.

It's against the terms of service to kickstart a business. You need a product. This is a long-term education-sales company, not a specific product of any kind.

This show and Cap'n O.G. Readmore did help make books adventurous for me. Hopefully OG will do a kickstarter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap'n_O._G._Readmore

Working for a company that is a direct competitor of Reading Rainbow's app, yet growing up with Reading Rainbow my feelings are mixed and diverse.

My phone's ring tone is the reading rainbow theme

Who can sing the theme song? And, are you singing it now either in your head or out loud? *raises hand

I've read the Kickstarter page twice, and I still can't figure out what they are going to spend the $1M on (or how they arrived at that number). I know it doesn't cost $1M to build a website.

How much does a CDN to reach 70% of grade school children cost? There's a lot more involved than just installing Apache on a vps.

From the video, it seems like a lot of it is going into paying licensing costs so they can give it to schools for free.

Are the old episodes available on Netflix or Hulu?

Looks like they're on Amazon Instant for $2/episode, and iTunes for $2/ep or $15 for a 15-episode season.

This is pretty neat! Work that nostalgia magic!

Yes, can't quite get season 5, or 4-9th.

Just hit the goal, still rising fast.

I dislike books. There are better mediums, like games, for conveying knowledge.

I agree. Books are so 20th century. I prefer going after things that are the same color.

I grew up with this show, I always looked forward to watching it in school, and I'd watch it at home as well. I loved the adventures and special effects, and just adored watching it.

Having said that, this show did absolutely nothing for me when it came to reading. It didn't inspire me to read, it didn't get me reading, it didn't make reading exciting for me. None of those elementary school programs (Book-it, book fairs, Reading Rainbow) did. I didn't start reading books until I found books that didn't condescend to and patronize children. When I discovered there were books with real situations and characters that acted real (and featured violence and sex and bad language), that's when I realized that books were good.

It's odd, enjoying this show for its entertainment value, but realizing it was completely ineffective in its goal, especially when so many people seem to think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

My mother gave me a blank check for book fairs and those Scholastic order sheets, and I blame it almost entirely for anything that I've done since. It only dawned on me as an adult how expensive that investment must have been for her at the time. The way I found as a child to find books that didn't condescend to or patronize children was to raise my reading level by reading many, many, books that did accept that I was a child and not a little adult.

I was a few years too old for Reading Rainbow (I was already 7 when it came out) but I enjoyed the theme song and that Kunta Kinte was reading children's books.

My mother gave me a library card, a bicycle, and carte blanche to spend all day every weekend at the library.

I didn't quite realize how much time I spent there until I started having trouble finding books I hadn't read in the YA racks.

> It only dawned on me as an adult how expensive that investment must have been for her at the time.

Isn't this so damn true about so many things, though? I have never contributed to a kickstarter before, but I sure as hell kicked a few hundred in here.

I believe that both Reading Rainbow and Book-it (and of course my parents' support of the programs and of reading in general) were extremely influential to my viewing reading as a socially normal and desirable thing, a viewpoint that was critical to my continued reading through the socially tumultuous years between childhood and adulthood. It rings true to me that I didn't love books until much later when I was able to read really good ones (with the possible exception of Animorphs, which was a great series...), but I really think the goal doesn't have to be to get kids to love books, but rather to get them to avoid following their peers in hating or fearing them.

Maybe, but your conclusion doesn't follow from evidence. For one, you might have been too old for the show. For too, how is that the Reading Rainbow stories were engaging to you, but the content of those same books was not?

Perhaps Reading Rainbow showed you that there are some books that are good, and it was a positive force that was temporarily overwhelemed by the negative force of the poor selection of books you found.

It also seems unlikely that in elementary school your problem with books was "not enough sex"

Huh, after reading this, you've crystallized my own feelings towards this show, which are almost identical.

The Goosebumps series was the perfect segway to loving reading for me: the idea that kids could get into, and then get themselves out of, dangerous situations that parents didn't respect or understand (though they too were often in danger they didn't realize), being classified in the "scary" genre, and the subtly charged boy/girl relationships (without being overtly sexual) made them much more interesting than typical 7-10 year old material.

I tried out the current Reading Rainbow app a few months ago for my brother (who was around 8 at the time), and he had absolutely no interest in it. Maybe I'm just overestimating the age of Reading Rainbow's target demographic?

That's funny, because I would call Goosebumps typical 7-10 year old material.

It was ineffective for you. A little bit of observation bias, perhaps?

Not surprising to hear that about Book-It specifically. Book-It hasn't been shown to be effective, and may have made kids less likely to read[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It.21

It's anecdotal, but one of my best friends would read something like a book a week because he got to look forward to pizza every weekend if he did. His reading comprehension speed is 4-5 times that of mine as a result today.

Definitely not the same for me. Book-it...er pizza was amazingly motivating as child. So much so that when my wife noted that I was reading enough a few years back, I said get me a pizza for every book I finish. I finished more books that year than any in my adult life. Having said that, it was sustaining and I've now retreated back to reading HN most of the time!

You know, I saw this, and I felt exactly as the first part of your post sounds. But I never thought of it in terms of the second. Interesting.

In for $50 and a T-shirt.

I really feel like this is off-topic.

I think promoting intelligence and learning is something highly relevant to hackers.

What topic is that?

The official guidelines of what dictates on/off topic: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I guess one could argue that "good hackers" would be interested in indulging nostalgia for a popular children's show in America from 1980s, but that's really pushing it.

I imagine good hackers might be interested in paying it forward, since literacy is a prerequisite of hacking.

You don't have to argue, you just count the upvotes.

Upvotes aren't important and do not indicate that something is good content.

From that very link:

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