Author's Blog

Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby

 

Reading Rainbow as my NYTimes Best Seller List

Butterfly in the sky/I can go twice as high/Take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow/I can go anywhere/Friends to know, and ways to grow, a reading rainbow/I can be anything/Take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow…a reading rainbow

O.M.G. that was my favorite show and I can still hear the music to the theme song (quoted above). You should hear me sing it! Or maybe it's better that you aren't tortured by my lack of talent.

I used Reading Rainbow as my New York Times Best Seller List – although I don't recall buying many of the books because most of them were picture books and I was reading chapter books and young adult titles. However, the end part of the show had children doing brief reviews of wonderful books and I wrote the titles down as books to check out. The middle of the show involved a wonderfully told story, narrated by a celebrity and was my favorite part. I literally had butterflies in my stomach from the anticipation of the reading of the book and being able to see the pictures on screen – sometimes animated. I remember one about a crocodile in the bayou that had songs and frogs croaking.

Reading Rainbow is no longer on the air (1983-2006) but the good feeling from a show centered entirely on books and reading and storytelling still registers in my mind. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and read a book borrowed from the library – the hardback ones that smell like moldy old pages.