For adults of a certain age, PBS’ Reading Rainbow looms large as a foundational element of their childhoods--one that shaped them into lifelong readers. Yet it’s not just the lasting influence of the show that lingers for those of us affectionately called “the Reading Rainbow generation”--it’s host LeVar Burton himself, the actor turned literary shepherd who, week after week, took us to new worlds through the indelible power of the written word. As host and executive producer, Burton transported millions of burgeoning thinkers to the outer reaches of the imagination, using narration, interviews, and “field trips” to foster a deep, abiding love of reading. As one of those young readers, Burton’s influence always felt seismic to me, somehow larger-than-life and yet deeply intimate--as if he were my friend, my teacher, talking to me and me alone.

Children fell hard for Reading Rainbow’s unique brand of curious, big-hearted imagination, and adults agreed. Over its 21 seasons, running from 1983 to 2006, Reading Rainbow collected more than 200 broadcast television awards, including 26 Emmy Awards and the prestigious Peabody Award. After the show went off the air in 2006, its mission lived on through the Reading Rainbow iPad app, which in just 14 short months surpassed ten million books read and video field trips watched. In 2016, Burton launched Reading Rainbow Skybrary, an online service that pairs his expertise in driving literacy with his desire to grow children into compassionate, critical-thinking adults. These days, in addition to his work with Skybrary, Burton has finally leaned into the question that chased him throughout the Reading Rainbow decades: “When are you going to do Reading Rainbow for adults?” In LeVar Burton Reads, his popular podcast, Burton curates a diverse array of short stories, then reads them aloud to an eager audience.

This week, Burton steps into a new role, one you’ll be shocked to learn he’s never before undertaken: host of the 70th annual National Book Awards. Burton claims he’s been preparing “for years and years”--given the career he’s had as a tireless advocate for literature, how could anyone disagree? Ahead of his hosting gig, I had the honor of speaking with Burton about his life as a reader, and about his tech-forward take on how reading will change in the years to come. Hint: paper books might become mostly a thing of the past, as Burton would have it. But in the immortal words of the man himself, you don’t have to take his word for it.

Adrienne Westenfeld: Tell me about your journey as a reader. Who taught you to love reading?

LeVar Burton: Irma Gene, my mother. My mom was an English teacher, then a social worker. I grew up in a household where reading was not optional. It was expected, insisted upon. In Irma Gene’s house, you spoke the King’s English and you read.

AW: How does being a reader shape and change a person, to your mind? What are the qualities it instills and the gifts it gives?

LB: Most of us associate learning how to read and developing an affinity for storytelling with a lap experience with a parent or guardian. We already have this powerful, positive association with the activity. Then in the consumption of knowledge and information through books and literature, we really steep ourselves in the lore of what it means to be human. Those are essential pieces of information for our journey as humans.

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AW: You mention how reading has a positive association for us as children, yet something educators have noticed is that although many children love to read, something happens on the journey to adulthood wherein some of us lose touch with the magic of reading. Somehow we fall out of love with reading. Why do you think that happens?

LB: I wouldn’t characterize it as necessarily falling out of love with reading, but succumbing to the aspects of life for which being in one’s imagination are deemed inappropriate. We get out of the habit of reading; we get out of the habit of magic; we get out of the habit of immersing ourselves in storytelling. Because life is so busy and full, we feel like reading is an activity that’s easy to sacrifice, when in fact it’s the exact opposite.

AW: How can adults who’ve gotten out of the practice or have become disenchanted with reading rediscover their love of it and develop a practice?

LB: I do this podcast called LeVar Burton Reads where I read a short story in every episode. I read a lot of different genres, but I lean into science fiction or speculative fiction, because I love it. One of the reasons I do this podcast is to continue my relationship with those adults who grew up on Reading Rainbow, and who are used to engaging in a relationship around storytelling with me. One of the reasons this is so important to me is because I genuinely believe that my generation is leaving a shitshow of problems, and the Reading Rainbow generation will have to solve these problems. I don’t know a problem that has ever been solved without imagination being in the mix. One of the reasons I’m doing this podcast is to continue to encourage y’all to devote time to being in your imaginations. You’re going to need that imaginative genius that can only come when you have a vibrant relationship with your imagination. You’re going to need all of those faculties to solve these very difficult problems.

JB Lacroix

AW: You choose such a great diversity of stories on the podcast. What, for you, makes a great short story?

LB: For me, the litmus test is how excited I get about reading it aloud. If I get really excited while I’m reading a story, if I begin to imagine the characters and see them, hear their voices, get excited about turns of phrase, start looking for moments of tension, moments of release… if I find my storyteller voice kick in, my storytelling presence kick in, I know I’m on to something. There’s no better way of storytelling, for me, than the written word, and interpreting a brilliant story.

AW: In what ways does telling a story aloud enhance the experience of it?

LB: It gives you the opportunity to, without the mechanism of reading, engage immediately in your imagination. When you’re reading, you’re multitasking. You’re reading and making the movie in your head. When you’re listening to storytelling, there’s no activity, there’s no multitasking--you’re indeed in your imagination as you’re engaged with the content of the story. It’s a shortcut for visualization.



AW: Those of us who grew up as part of the Reading Rainbow generation feel such a deep affinity for you, and a deep connection to you. Part of the magic of that show, for us, was that it felt so personal. It felt as if you were talking only to me, and me alone. Is that discomfiting, that legions of people feel such intimacy with you, but to you, they’re strangers?

LB: Nobody’s ever used the word discomfiting about my life before. But no, it’s not discomfiting. At all. Here’s why: I, too, feel that same sense of affinity with y’all. Certainly it became my intention while shooting those segments and doing the show. It was always my intention to speak to just one child. That was the energy I brought to my job. I was genuinely trying to communicate my genuine love of literature, the written word, the value of story, and its ability to give us a window into the world. Those windows can sometimes reveal our own innermost selves.

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AW: Something I hear often is the sentiment, “I don’t have time to read.” What’s your response to that?

LB: You need to make the time. You have time to eat; you have time to sleep; you have time to love. I think reading for pleasure is an act of self-care, genuinely. I really do, especially in today’s world. You’ve gotta turn off the news; you’ve got to create some escape time in your imagination. You have to feed yourself, people! Otherwise, we have a tendency to get locked into the circumstances of life, and less engaged in the solution aspect of ourselves. It’s really critical for us to read for pleasure. One of the miracles of the modern era is that on my iPad, and consequently, because of the Cloud, on my phone, I carry a library of reading material. I mean, literally a library. It’s so available. We just have to shift our awareness a degree in that direction.

AW: What are your feelings about e-readers and audiobooks? Are you a purist about the way you consume books?

LB: No. I’m a purist about storytelling. I think storytelling is essential to healthy human beings. How you consume your stories doesn’t matter to me. I come from a people for whom it was illegal to learn how to read. So the idea that I can carry a library around is not only a miracle to me--it was unfathomable two generations ago in my hometown.

Actor LeVar Burton signs and discusses his new book "The Rhino Who Swallowed A Storm" at Barnes & Noble Booksellers on December 20, 2014 in Burbank, California. Paul Archuleta

AW: How do you think technology is reshaping our relationship to reading and the way we read? Is it reshaping the literature we create?

LB: I have to say, it’s beginning to have an impact on our storytelling. There’s Quibi now. Jeffrey Katzenberg is making feature stories and releasing them in segments to better align with how we consume our stories these days. Technology is definitely having an impact on our storytelling, and it’s having an impact on the written word, structurally speaking. We’re reading on devices more. I think that’s inevitable for humanity, because continuing to make books out of trees will be recognized as unsustainable in the not too distant future. I think we will continue to print art books and children’s books. That lap experience is really critical to the healthy development of emerging human beings. But I think most of us going forward will consume more of our literary content on our digital devices.



AW: We talk a lot about screen time--not just for kids, but for adults, too. Much of the time people once spent reading, they now spend watching TV or scrolling social media. How can people break away from the tyranny of the screen and focus on a book?

LB: I don’t have notifications. I don’t allow notifications on my phone to distract me. I’m distracted enough by the very presence of a phone in my life, and I recognize that I need some discipline where the temptation to constantly engage is concerned. That is a practice; it’s a discipline. I think we’ve been wholly undisciplined in our engagement with technology and how we’ve allowed it to corrupt our lives. We wrestle our lives back through conscious effort and practice. It’s not fucking rocket science. It’s discipline. We know what that looks like. We know what that feels like. We don’t like it, but the alternative is to be a zombie. And I ain’t here for that.

AW: Speaking of zombies who don’t read, as you know, we have a non-reader in the White House. Some people say that this doesn’t matter--that the president’s job isn’t to run a national book club. Do you think it matters?

LB: It matters tremendously. Just as it matters what the person who occupies that office says. It matters how they behave. It matters what they model in terms of their civic responsibilities. It all matters. And it matters mostly to children who are looking to us as elders to set the boundaries of what it means to be human. For a person in that position to loudly and proudly profess their disdain for reading is really dangerous, like so much else about this administration.

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AW: Tell me about your reading practice. How do you encounter books?

LB: I love bookstores. I love physical bookstores. I love walking into a bookstore and losing a couple of hours of time. I rely on recommendations from friends, as well as sources like Esquire, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair.

AW: When do you get your best reading done?

LB: Pre-bedtime, when the house is quiet. Oftentimes I’ll go to bed early, then wake up and read from midnight to 2:00 AM or from 2:00 to 4:00 AM. Then I go back to sleep. I like doing that because then I’m really awake. I’m in that power-down mode from the end of the day--the intention is to go to sleep. So I’ll go to sleep with my glasses dangling off the bridge of my nose, with whatever it is I’m reading lying next to me. It’s good to read a little but then go to sleep, put the glasses away, put the reading material away, just inches away on the bedside stand, and then I know I’m going to wake back up. How awake I get depends on how much I want to read what’s next on my list. I always have stuff to read for work as well as for pleasure. Being awake is really key to getting reading my reading in. Always best to be awake.

AW: What can people who want to stand up for the sanctity of reading and be a literary advocate do to further this cause in their own lives?

LB: That’s the thing. I don’t think much else is required. But to reassert our birthright as literate human beings is the birthright of every single one of us with no exception. Your mind is untethered. You have the ability to pick up a book and read, and so you are emancipated in your mind. It’s a part of who we are, and to reclaim it is an act of radical humanism.

Adrienne Westenfeld Assistant Editor Adrienne Westenfeld is a writer and editor at Esquire, where she covers books and culture.

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