New From Here
We Dream A World

Creating Reading Rainbow: The Untold Story of a Beloved Children’s Series

Reading Rainbow is one of the most successful PBS children’s series in television history, earning numerous national and international awards including 26 Emmys and a Peabody Award. But perhaps more important than anything else, Reading Rainbow helped generations of children cultivate a love for books.

Reading Rainbow is very much a story of humble beginnings and enormous perseverance. Over five summers, Tony Buttino Sr. and his colleagues at WNED-TV, the public television station in Buffalo, New York, worked in collaboration with educators and librarians to experiment with summer reading programs. But after trialing these programs, the WNED team realized there was a big need for a new children’s literacy series and believed they could create a new show with local and national collaborators and friends. After fits and starts, and enough twists and turns to fill a children’s book, Reading Rainbow premiered in the summer of 1983 and captured the attention of 6.5 million young viewers.

Creating Reading Rainbow explores the many intriguing and homespun stories that, when woven together, reveal how this groundbreaking and iconic television series came to be. What led to the series being called “Reading Rainbow”? How did the road to Reading Rainbow wind its way through Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood? How did a public television station in Buffalo spearhead a movement in education and spark the passion for reading in millions of children? And, what does lasagna have to do with it?

More Non-Juvenile Books

  • In Collision of Power, Marty Baron recounts his tenure as editor of The Washington Post during a tumultuous period marked by the ownership change to Jeff Bezos and the election of Donald Trump. Facing unprecedented challenges, Baron and his team navigated the complexities of reporting on a president who aggressively targeted the media, all while adapting to the evolving dynamics within their newsroom.

    Read More about "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post"...

  • Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals the profound ecological impacts of roads, which stretch over 40 million miles across the globe. While often overlooked as mere infrastructure, these roadways pose significant threats to wildlife, resulting in the deaths of a million animals daily in the U.S. alone, and disrupting natural habitats in ways we are just beginning to understand.

    Read More about "Crossing: How Road Ecology is shaping the future of our planet"...

  • In Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores the lives of four women navigating love, choices, and regrets during the pandemic. Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer, reflects on her past relationships while her friends face their own struggles, revealing the complexities of happiness and self-awareness in a beautifully crafted narrative.

    Read More about "Dream Count"...

  • In Shishmaref, Alaska, new seawalls are constructed while residents navigate the many practical and bureaucratic obstacles to moving their entire island village to higher ground. Farther south, inland hunters and fishermen set out to grow more of their own food–and to support the reintroduction of wood bison, an ancient species well suited to expected habitat changes. First Nations people in Canada team with conservationists to protect land for both local use and environmental resilience. In Early Warming, Alaskan Writer Laureate, Nancy Lord, takes a cutting-edge look at how communities in the North–where global warming is amplified and climate-change effects are most [...]