Reading Rainbow Returns!

I keep hearing that LeVar Burton is bringing back Reading Rainbow with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. This is very exciting to those of us who grew up watching the show. Unsurprisingly, the initial goal of $1,000,000 has already been exceeded and the goal has now been raised to $5,000,000. The campaign has been going on less than a week!

What did surprise me was that the show apparently ran until 2006. Really?! I know I was a bit past the stage of needing help selecting chapter books by 2006, but I would have been prepared to state in court that the show had stopped airing sometime in the mid-90s. In my extensive research (I did two internet searches), I found that the show in fact ran all the way from 1983 through 2006. I could probably poke around a bit more and confirm this, but I'm too lazy to do so. I'll just remain stunned that the show I grew up on was still enchanting children a mere eight years ago.

If you also have fond memories of LeVar and his earring, please visit the Kickstarter page and consider donating. After all, a pledge of $10,000 gets you a dinner with the man himself AND you get to wear Geordi's visor from Star Trek! There is clearly something wrong with people because all of the $10,000+ donors so far have instead chosen to sponsor a school or some such rot.

The Advent of Childhood

Reading The Age of Comfort by Joan DeJean, I came across the fascinating fact that the concept of childhood as we know it today began in the eighteenth century and was part of the same movement that brought comfort and privacy to the home.

DeJean's book chronicles the development of comfort, starting with its origins in Paris. Before the "age of comfort", homes were designed to display and impress, not to give their residents any sense of privacy or comfortable living conditions.

When architects began to develop rooms specifically for the family, children began to get their own bedrooms, school rooms, and space to exercise. They no longer had to be sent away to boarding school at a young age to prevent them from spoiling the grand effect of the enormous, stuffy rooms that had dominated palatial homes in ages past. When children were given their own space, they became a real part of the family for the first time in French memory. These innovations spread from Paris to the rest of Europe and continue to influence the way we live today.