Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 10, 1993 TAG: 9307100319
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACKIE HYMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
"I know that we are helping to create a generation of passionate literate human beings. That's the payoff," said the actor, best-known for starring roles in the miniseries "Roots" and the syndicated series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
Burton signed on for "Reading Rainbow" when it was intended to be a summer series, but it has lasted for a decade.
The magazine-style show, aimed at 5-to-8-year-olds, airs five days a week (at 9:30 a.m. on WBRA-Channel 15). Nearly 100 half-hour episodes have been produced, to the tune of three Emmy Awards and other honors.
Celebrity readers have included James Earl Jones, Bill Cosby, Ruby Dee, Peter Falk, Jane Pauley, Julia Child and Jason Robards. Books featured on the show have seen sales rise as much as 600 percent.
Burton visits a location related to the book's subject, which may involve history, science, or simply how pizza is made. Segments of each show include animation, music videos and "kid on the street" interviews.
"We present literature as a place to go in your imagination and as a jumping-off point for personal exploration in your own life, the book-as-a-trigger concept, as a catalyst for you to go and have an adventure," Burton said.
"What's different today about our focus is that now we feel that we have really established this great bond with our audience," he said. "We feel it is appropriate to take chances. The show that won the Emmy this year was about adoption and what families look like."
He also cited a Peabody Award-winning show called "The Wall," about the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, and a recently completed episode about slavery and the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape to Canada in the 1800s.
Burton, an "Army brat" born in 1957 in West Germany, fell in love with books as a child.
"My mother was a teacher," he said. "Reading was like breathing in the house where I grew up."
Burton was studying drama at the University of Southern California when he won the part of the young Kunta Kinte in the television miniseries "Roots." The show dramatized the nation's legacy of slavery through the story of author Alex Haley's family.
"Those 12 hours of television changed the way a nation dealt with a horrible scar, a wound that had not healed," Burton said.
They also changed his life.
"Between `Roots' and `Star Trek,' there hasn't been any place yet that I have been to on this planet that I have not been recognized," he said.
Seeing the impact of "Roots" helped Burton realize what he could achieve in his career.
"I've really aspired to associate myself with projects that are the best use of the medium, be it television or film, projects that inspire us, cause us to look at ourselves and be awed by that, projects that ennoble us in some way, that uplift us and carry us forward," he said.
He was approached about "Reading Rainbow" after the producers saw him on a televised interview.
"They brought the idea to me, a half-hour designed to promote literacy," he said. "I thought they must be joking. . . . Ten years ago, television was being depicted as the enemy of learning.
"As long as there's a need for this show, we will continue to scrape together the money each year," Burton said, explaining that PBS recently cut the series' budget by $1.5 million. Other funding comes from the Kellogg Company and the National Science Foundation.
by CNB