Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Butterfly In The Sky: The Story Of ‘Reading Rainbow’ on Netflix, A Loving Tribute To The PBS Show

Millions of kids grew up watching Reading Rainbow, and in the new documentary Butterfly In the Sky, available now on Netflix, we can relive those childhood memories. The show is a loving history of the show’s creation and evolution, from its inception, to its casting of LeVar Burton, and reveals some juicy details about the making of certain episodes and the involvement of some of the celebrities who guest-starred in the show. While fans of the original series will likely love the insight and retrospective of moments, the documentary might make new fans of the show, too, now that many of the show’s stories and selected full episodes available on YouTube.

BUTTERFLY IN THE SKY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: LeVar Burton, the actor and longtime host of Reading Rainbow, quietly sits in an armchair in a library and reads the children’s book Amazing Grace, by Mary Hoffman.”This is Amazing Grace. This was one of my favorite episodes of Reading Rainbow,” he says.

The Gist: The words “butterfly in the sky” may not mean much to some people, but to those of us who grew up when the PBS series Reading Rainbow was at its peak, they represent four words that manage to transport us back to childhood as the opening lyrics to the show’s theme song. The show, which ran for 26 years, was hosted by LeVar Burton and featured loads of celebrity guests, visits to exotic locations, and book reviews from kids. Working together, those things combined for one main purpose: to instill a love of reading in kids and adults alike.

Butterfly In the Sky incorporates interviews with Burton and many of the crew members who made the show, as well as several “Book Review Kids” to tell the show’s origin story. It’s easy to forget that LeVar Burton was on the most-watched television show of all time up to that point in America, Roots, so when he was cast as the host of Reading Rainbow, he was already a major star, one that producers didn’t think they would ever get.

At the time that Reading Rainbow was being developed, many educators were worried that TV was driving kids away from books, so with Burton on board, the mission was to use the medium to get kids excited about reading. This documentary delves into every aspect of the show’s creation, speaking with creators Cecily Truett Lancit, Larry Lancit, Twila Liggett, and Tony Buttino about their collaboration in the beginning, the origins of its unforgettable theme song, written by Steve Horelick and sing by Tina Fabrique, and the show’s inclusion of celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg (who co-produced this documentary), James Earl Jones, and Run DMC to narrate stories and perform on the show.

And while we remember the show for its promotion of books and reading, the documentary points out just how quietly subversive and progressive the show’s vision was in the way it handled things like inclusion and diversity, as well as the way it tackled hard topics like homelessness and 9/11. (In one memorable story, Liggett recalls one Southern state pulling an episode featuring the birth of a baby from its schedule because the show included the baby emerging from its mother, as it deemed the content inappropriate.) Ultimately, the show went off the air after 26 years when it lost funding, something that still clearly stings for many of the people involved in making it.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Usually the only place we get to watch documentaries about the making of a TV show are as DVD extras or TV specials that air when a series is ending for good. But Butterfly In The Sky also reminded me of Behind The Music, and made me wonder why someone hasn’t make a TV series that dives deep into the origins and making of beloved TV shows.

Our Take: Butterfly In The Sky does the trick of not only being entertaining and nostalgic in its own right, but for making us want to immediately go back and revisit Reading Rainbow. While the show gets the straightforward documentary treatment, there’s plenty of unlikely material that makes us appreciate the original show even more. There’s a particularly creepy story about the time the crew shot in a cave filled with 60 million bats (and millions of worms) for one episode, and another story of getting the perfect (slightly dangerous) shot in Hawaii as Mt. Kilauea erupted.

While the documentary is an entertaining overview of the show and Burton’s career as host, it’s clear that this show was, first and foremost, a labor of love and a passion project for everyone involved. That they got to do it for 26 years feels miraculous, but toward the end of its run when funding would eventually dry up, it’s obvious that it was not the decision of anyone on the crew to pull the plug, and they’d likely still be making it if they could. While it was a show that was truly of its era, it’s also one that was ahead of its time and this documentary honors what it meant to its young viewers, and its lasting legacy.

Parting Shot: Many of those interviewed from the crew of the original show sing along to the theme song, and then a clip from an old episode of the show plays, with Burton signing off and telling viewers, “I’ll see you next time.”

Performance Worth Watching: It’s kind of the obvious choice to say LeVar Burton, but I found his own personal story and career trajectory to be one of the most interesting parts of this special, because we forget how popular he was at different points in his career, and how much he had to juggle to remain the host of Reading Rainbow while he worked on other projects.

Memorable Dialogue: “Reading Rainbow was not about learning to read, it was about loving to read,” Ed Wiseman, one of the show’s directors explained early on.

Our Call: STREAM IT! It would have been enough to just watch some clips of a beloved old show and learn how it was made, but there was clearly an emotional resonance and catharsis for some of the show’s creators who appear here to talk about their love of making Reading Rainbow, and it comes through in the final edit.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.