Reading Rainbow Was a Brain Hijack, and Thank God

The TV is on. It’s a boxy CRT with a glow that makes everyone’s skin look like a peach that got left in the sun. There’s probably a VHS cart squeaking down a classroom aisle somewhere, the kind with one wobbly wheel that sounds like a hamster begging for mercy. And then it happens.

“Butterfly in the sky / I can go twice as high.”

Two lines. That’s all it takes. School stops being school. The carpet stops smelling like paste and pencil shavings and somebody’s wet mittens. Your living room stops being your living room. It’s a launchpad. It’s a portal. It’s a gentle little kidnapping where the ransom is your attention and the getaway car is a synthesizer.

People love to say Reading Rainbow made reading “cool.” Like it was out there doing a polite literacy fundraiser, passing a hat, asking you to please, if you wouldn’t mind, consider enjoying books. No. Reading Rainbow didn’t beg you to be good. It hijacked your brain with a glitter-synth lullaby, then used LeVar Burton’s calm authority and kid-built proof to make books feel like contraband you could brag about.

The butterfly hits

That’s the part nobody admits. Not “education.” Access. The show doesn’t pitch books as medicine. It sells them like a secret hallway behind the library shelves. Even the way the song lifts on “twice as high” feels like your sneakers leaving the floor for half a second. It’s kid-safe ecstasy, the kind your third grade teacher couldn’t confiscate because it was technically PBS.

And yes, it’s embarrassing how fast it works. The hook doesn’t just stick in your head. It moves into your molars. Days later you’re chewing a bologna sandwich and your brain is like, hey, remember that butterfly? You’re welcome.

This song is a weapon (politely)

The credits matter because this wasn’t some accidental earworm that slipped past the adults. The original theme-song writers are Steve Horelick, Dennis Neil Kleinman, and Janet Weir. The broadcast vocal from the classic 1983 to 1999 era is credited to Tina Fabrique. That voice is doing heavy lifting. It’s not belting like an arena rock hero. It’s inviting you like a friend who already knows you’re coming.

And Horelick was not phoning it in. He’s said he produced all the music for every episode and wrote about 90 percent of it. Every episode. That means the show’s sound was a controlled substance. The same hands that put the sugar on the hook also sprinkled the soundtrack under the book pages and the field trips. Consistency is mind control’s less glamorous cousin.

Also, the early mix has that Buchla-like synth flavor people associate with expensive electronic toys and science museums. It’s the sound of buttons you are not allowed to press. Perfect. Make the music feel like forbidden technology and the book feels like a gadget.

LeVar’s superpower is permission

LeVar’s vibe is not hype. It’s clearance.

He doesn’t sell you a book. He opens a door and stands there, calm, letting you decide if you’re brave enough to walk through. There’s a steadiness to him that makes reading feel less like homework and more like you’re being trusted with something. I used to keep notes on TV, even then, because everyone told me I was overthinking it. I wasn’t. The quiet parts were louder than we admit. LeVar’s quiet is the whole pitch.

And the show premiered nationally on PBS on July 11, 1983, which means it arrived right in that sweet spot when public TV still felt like a slightly underfunded secret society. Sesame Street was the front door. Reading Rainbow was the side entrance that only cool kids noticed.

The machine inside the show

Step one: picture-book pan - and-scan. The camera glides across illustrations like they’re museum pieces. You’re not “reading.” You’re watching art while words happen to be involved. It tricks kids who think reading is just staring at black marks until your eyes dry out.

Step two: field trip dopamine. The show takes the book’s idea and drops LeVar into the real world. Factory floors, animal habitats, behind-the-scenes places where you’re not supposed to be unless you have a clipboard or a badge. The message is simple and lethal: books are not imaginary. Books are maps.

Step three: Book Reviews. This is where the show flips you from consumer to accomplice. LeVar delivers the line like he’s letting you in on a scheme: “But you don’t have to take my word for it.” Then kids, actual kids, show up and talk about books like they’re reporting on treasure they found behind the gym.

This didn’t announce itself, but it mattered. Adult authority is there, sure, but it’s immediately outsourced to your peers. The show doesn’t just say “reading is good.” It says “kids like you have receipts, and they’re daring you to call them liars.”

Even the pilot energy is weirdly confident. The pilot was produced in 1981 and later aired as the eighth episode in 1983, featuring Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat. That title alone sounds like something passed to you on a folded note. Like, you wanna know a secret? Meet me by the luggage carousel.

The pledge-week hustle nobody admits

Those tapes showed up like contraband delivered by the world’s most wholesome dealer. The little plastic clamshell case, the label that looked like it had been typed on a machine that hated joy, the teacher wheeling in the TV cart like it was the Ark of the Covenant. And suddenly, the classroom was a screening room. The show wasn’t asking your parents for permission. It was getting past them entirely.

ReadingRainbow.org brags the program library has over 150 programs, and that over 500,000 copies of episodes have been sold since 1995. That’s not just distribution. That’s a delivery system. It’s the same reason Scholastic order forms got folded into backpacks until they were creased like road maps. A kid doesn’t need “a love of reading.” A kid needs a specific object to want, and a way to talk about it at recess.

And that’s what the show provided. Specific books. Specific topics. Specific experiences. It turned titles into playground currency. Not in a Hallmark way. In a “my cousin has the good stuff” way.

The accusation

Reading Rainbow was the coolest babysitter school ever hired, and it got away with it by making you do the work, gladly.

The theme song hooks you like a jingle for a product you didn’t know you needed. LeVar gives you permission without begging. The field trip pays off the fantasy. Then the kid reviews hand you the receipt and stare you down. You want to argue? Fine. Argue with the eight-year-old who just told you a book changed their whole brain. Good luck, tough guy.

Nobody wrote this down. I did. Reading Rainbow didn’t make reading cool by trying to sound cool. It made reading feel like a secret you could own, and it did it with a butterfly, a synth, and one calm man who never once acted like you were stupid.

Which is why, decades later, two lines still turn the lights on in your head. Butterfly in the sky. Twice as high. And suddenly you’re back on that carpet, feeling like the library is hiding something for you, specifically. Like you’re about to steal a whole universe and return it before dinner.