LibraryPoint Blog

 After more than twenty years of introducing children to great books, PBS’s Reading Rainbow television series has come to an end.   Over the course of 155 programs, host Levar Burton visited museums and pueblos, interviewed entrepreneurs and biologists, showed us how crayons are made and how oil spills are cleaned up, all the while linking the real world to the best in children’s literature.  Here’s a look at a few favorite books Levar introduced over the years.

While our children write their lessons with pencils and computers, Pakistani schoolchildren in the village of Korphe used to write on the ground with sticks.  Then one day a lost climber stumbled into their village, and everything changed.

Adults may recognize this as the story of Greg Mortensen, well-known for the bestselling book, “Three Cups of Tea,” about his work building schools in Pakistan.  Now young children can learn the story in his new picture book, “Listen to the Wind, The Story of Dr. Greg and Three Cups of Tea.”  

When Frank McCourt passed last month, he left behind memoirs filled with anguish, love, and dark merriment.  Personal experiences are what this Irish-American author took and shaped into works of sorrowful beauty.

Forty years ago, crowds of young people converged on the quiet farming town of Bethel, New York, for a legendary concert. For many, it was the pivotal cultural event of their lives. The Woodstock Generation may be approaching retirement age, but the memories of those wild summer days rock on in books, music, and video.