LeVar Burton wants to crowdfund Reading Rainbow for mobile and consoles

LeVar Burton’s Kickstarter campaign to bring back Reading Rainbow has already proved phenomenally successful, and the project’s organizers are now looking to take the project to gaming consoles, mobile devices and other places. The educational program originated as Reading Rainbow, a Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning children’s television series that was hosted by Burton and aired on PBS from 1983 to 2006. Burton relaunched it as an iPad app in 2011, and launched aKickstarter campaign earlier this week to bring Reading Rainbow to the web and to schools everywhere. The funding drive had a goal of $1 million, which would have allowed the Reading Rainbow organization to provide the software for free to 1,500 schools in need. Contributors blew past the original goal in 11 hours. As of this writing, less than three full days since the beginning of the campaign, it has pulled in more than $2.85 million from over 64,000 backers. In a Kickstarter update posted this afternoon, Burton announced a stretch goal of $5 million.