Butterfly in the sky… you can go twice as high! Admit it, you just sang that out loud. For over 20 years, Reading Rainbow made kids believe that books weren’t just homework assignments in disguise, they were passports to whole new worlds. And now, after nearly two decades away, this beloved series is soaring back onto our screens with a fresh host: TikTok star and public library champion Mychal Threets, a.k.a. Mychal the Librarian.

LeVar Burton may have passed the torch (or, more appropriately, the bookmark), but the spirit of Reading Rainbow is alive and well. Judging from the announcement, the reboot is sticking close to the original recipe: heart, humor, big-name celebrity guests like John Legend, Adam DeVine, Gabrielle Union, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and, of course, a stack of books just waiting to be cracked open.

And let’s be real: this reboot couldn’t have come at a better time. Kids today are more likely to scroll than to flip pages, and literacy rates are taking a hit. But Reading Rainbow has always been about more than words on paper, it’s about imagination, empathy, and the magic of seeing yourself in a story. With Mychal’s boundless energy, joyful advocacy, and love for libraries, the new generation of readers is in excellent hands.

But the question remains: will the iconic theme song return?

So dust off your library card and prepare for takeoff. Reading Rainbow is back, baby, and once again proving that the greatest special effect of all is still the human imagination.

[Via Nerdist]