Get Off Your Ass and Read to Your Kids!
June 4, 2014
As of this morning LeVar Burton’s Kickstarter campaign to re-boot Reading Rainbow has raised 3.5 Million dollars. What an amazing example of the power of celebrity and social media! I mean wow, gosh, and golly gee!
Now, let’s have a little tête-à-tête shall we, hmm? A spot of palaver with Nick as I wipe some of spit and reality polish onto this situation.
Reading Rainbow is the progenitor of these wacky book trailers I’ve seen and heard about. Commercials really, where they film a thirty second to a minute teaser trailer type scene of what the book could be like if you read it. Why? Because, publishers have nifty little business spreadsheets that compile reader information. That information says that what is left of the reading public is lazy and dumb. They need the literary equivalent of a Coors Lite commercial featuring girls in bikinis playing beach volleyball.
Burton has been quoting scholastic statistics from the success of his original venture as rationale for the re-boot. But, numbers are ticklish things, my friends. The aforementioned publisher’s numbers say the public is too lazy and stupid, remember? So let’s look at the reality, not the numbers.
I am of the Reading Rainbow generation. Kids who were enticed to read a book because we couldn’t stop staring at the TV screen. The range for this generation is about 45 to 20 year-olds in America. Guess what? That is one of the worst demographics for pleasure readers since written language was passed beyond the borders of cloistered monasteries and moldy collegiate studies and libraries. So take a moment to reflect on what that says for the longevity of this multi-million dollar project. Money that could have supported a new filmmaker who has a brilliant story but no business backing, or a musician that just wants to sing and not show us her tits.
I speak from experience. My numbers are faces in crowds. People not spreadsheets. I have spoken at sixty-five libraries over the last two years. The faces that read? The bulk of them are late middle-age to post menopausal women. Gals who have lived, loved, and been around the same block too many times to count. Women who may read a romance, but chuckle and snort at the unreality of the story. My kind of ladies! Ladies that did not have Reading Rainbow growing up. they read because they wanted to. No enticement needed beyond what the pages held.
The harsh reality is that the Reading Rainbow generation taken as a whole doesn’t read. Even the most empathetic among us has a tendency to be self-involved with our hobbies and likes. Yes, you may read. Yes, your group of close friends may read, too. But trust me, there are seven billion souls in this world, your circle of readers is a very small slice of that ecumenical pie.
Let’s give those millions of dollars to entrepreneurs who haven’t had the chance for their voice to be heard. Get off your lazy ass and read to your kids, so LeVar can retire in peace.
~Nick Shamhart
P.S. To give LeVar his due the publishers have a statistic that says that at the moment the most likely person to pick up a book for pleasure reading in America is a college-educated black. You must have done something right right, LeVar. You did succeed, brother!
