Take a Look! Levar Burton Tearfully Thanks Supporters After Donations Revive Reading Rainbow
by Lorraine Chow
Dan Howzit via Flickr Creative Commons
Overwhelming public support has rebooted the childhood classic.
You might have heard that Levar Burton, the delightfully charming host of Reading Rainbow (or Geordi La Forge for you Trekkies out there), reached his fundraising goal to revive the classic PBS show, after a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign.
Burton, in the video below, watches as the online donations rapidly tick past the $1 million goal. With tears in his eyes, he says, "I am so proud that this community has come together to support this effort, and it's a people's thing. It's the $5, it's the $10, it's the $25, it's the $1 pledges and it's unbelievable. Or actually, it's very believable."
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"We are literally changing the world, one children's book at a time," he concluded.
Incredibly, the Kickstarter is now well past $3 million and there's still an entire month of fundraising left to go.
After the beloved show was pulled off the air in 2009, the Roots actor bought the rights to the franchise, re-launching it as a tablet app in 2012. But, of course, not everyone has an iPad, leaving Reading Rainbow unavailable to many.
With the donations, he is trying to bring Reading Rainbow and its extensive library of books and interactive games to the Internet so needy classrooms around the country can have access to it online for free.
As Burton says in his Kickstarter, one out of every four children in America will grow up illiterate and we cannot afford to lose generations of children to illiteracy.
Burton told People that he wants his product to reach as many schools as possible. "The more money we raise, the more of an effect we can have on the way we are educating our children in this nation, in the classroom – where it really makes a difference."
crowdfunding kickstarter Levar Burton PBS reading Reading Rainbow
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