June 28, 2014: Crowdfunding Focus: Reading Rainbow For Every Child

We're a community of nerds. Let's just be honest about that. So when I say "LeVar Burton," most of us will reply by holding up hairclips in front of our eyes and completely failing to get a date -- ever -- just like our hero, Geordi LaForge.

However, for many people who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, LeVar Burton is better known as the host of Reading Rainbow, a program on public television dedicated to the radical idea that reading is fun.

Mr. Burton has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to create new Reading Rainbow educational material and digitize the Reading Rainbow library and host it all online, where it is accessible to students and teachers any time they want. In America today, 1 in 4 children grows up illiterate, which is shocking and shameful in a country as rich in resources and ideas as the United States.

The campaign ends on July 2. We backed it, and we hope you'll do the same.

-- Andrew Hackard