Reading Rainbow, "Visiting Day"

The Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign offers media tools and resources to support informed discussion, decision making, and action about solution-based reentry programs that foster public safety and support healthy communities. We encourage you to review the diverse materials and consider how you may be able to use them effectively.

The Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign acts as a catalyst to encourage solution-based reentry activities. Review this chronicle of public television and community events/actions to gain ideas on what may work in your arena.

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Reading Rainbow, hosted by LeVar Burton, is a critically-acclaimed award-winning half-hour PBS series that turns children on to books and reading. The series targets 4-8 year olds, and is based on research that identifies these early years as the optimum time for children to learn to read, and to adopt positive reading habits, skills, and attitudes.

A new episode of Reading Rainbow, “Visiting Day,” aired on December 15, 2004 and again on January 17, 2005. In this episode, LeVar introduces a family separated by a prison sentence. The viewing audiences join the family for visiting day and find out what life is like for kids when a parent is incarcerated and what it's like for a parent who can't be at home with his family. This episode provides a special opportunity for current participants in the Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign to engage 4 – 8 year-old children and their parents and caregivers.

Series Goals:

Entice children to read and explore quality literature
Establish familiarity with books
Generate excitement for learning
Link books and reading to exciting places, people, and events
Encourage life-long reading habits
Present a diversity of people in a variety of roles - so children who watch the series regularly will see people who look like them

Helping Kids Prepare for School
Having an interest in books, reading, the world, and learning is key to success in school. Reading Rainbow motivates children to read, introduces them to new experiences, teaches respect for others, and helps them develop a positive self-concept. It also reinforces the fundamentals of literacy – comprehension, grasping the main idea, predicting the outcome, comparing and contrasting, extending the story to other experiences, summarizing, sequencing, organizing information, and using descriptive language.

Reading Rainbow's dynamic, fast-paced, magazine-style format features on-location adventures, colorful animation, and hip music videos. Popular personalities, including Bill Cosby, Tyne Daly, and Whoopi Goldberg, narrate the program's feature book, while captivating illustrations appear on-screen. "Kid-on-the-street" interviews allow real kids to sound off about issues, and in every episode kids the age of viewers recommend three additional books to read.

In July 1983 Reading Rainbow premiered as a summer television series with the intent to promote reading during non-school months. By 1990 the series moved to year around broadcast and, presently, each of the 139 episodes air about twice a year. Over the years, Reading Rainbow has expanded its scope of topics and issues while keeping the joy of reading at the center of its message. Some of these episodes explore science and math, while others include social issues such as homelessness, the Vietnam Memorial, music of slavery, and youngsters talking about gangs and their community of Watts.

Reading Rainbow has been recognized with over 150 awards: 18 Emmys (seven for "Outstanding Children's Series"), a prestigious Peabody, eight CINE Golden Eagles, seven Parent's Choice Awards, and three international Prix Jeunesse Awards. In a more personal way, the series' impact is acknowledged by the actions of children. Librarians and booksellers report that books featured on episodes receive enormous requests and quickly become "classics" in kids' personal libraries; and young children often ask for books seen on Reading Rainbow by title and sometimes even by author.

The following books can be used in conjunction with Reading Rainbow's “Visiting Day.”

VISITING DAY
by Jacqueline Woodson, James Ransome

Editorial Review From Publishers Weekly
This poignant picture book chronicles a joyful girl narrator's hard-to-bear anticipation and special preparations for a journey with her grandmother to see her father. Both text and artwork keep the destination a mystery, wisely focusing instead on the excitement of the upcoming reunion. As Woodson's (The Other Side) rhythmic prose, punctuated by the refrain ("only on visiting day"), builds a sense of expectation, Ransome (Satchel Paige), too, underscores the build-up. Wordless spreads depict Grandma fixing the narrator's hair and the pair climbing aboard the bus. Meanwhile, the girl imagines her father making his own preparations. Ransome portrays a handsome man in khaki shirt and slacks; a calendar on the wall marks the days to his daughter's visit, hanging next to her artwork accented with red hearts. Ultimately, "the bus pulls up in front of a big old building where, as Grandma puts it, Daddy is doing a little time." Ransome shows barbed-wire atop high walls and a guard tower in stern relief against a perfect blue sky. Throughout, he uses a radiant, rich, marine blue (the bus's accents, the girl's dress and a prison guard's uniform) to contrast freedom and captivity. Told completely from a child's perspective, the narrative makes no judgment about what Daddy did or why he's incarcerated. A shared feeling of hope and family togetherness pervades each spread, from Grandma cooking fried chicken in the morning for the bus ride, to the narrator sitting down with crayons when she gets home to make Daddy more pictures. Any child who has been separated from a loved one can identify with the feelings of this winning heroine.

Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc., Ages 4-8

MAMA LOVES ME FROM AWAY
by Pat Brisson, Laurie Caple

Kirkus Reviews
Book Cover Separated by a prison sentence, a child and her mother find ways to stay connected in this affecting story. Sugar and Mama are extremely close. They share the same birthday and love to spend time together telling stories. But life takes an unexpected turn when Mama is incarcerated-Brisson doesn't give details, but all readers need to know is revealed in Sugar's eyes.

LET'S TALK ABOUT WHEN YOUR PARENT IS IN JAIL
By Maureen K. Wittbold

Book Cover This book offers well organized, truthful (not sugar coated), and easy to understand explanations about the various aspects of having a parent in jail. The book even mentions how sometimes children go to live in a foster home when their parent is in jail. Addressing such a difficult topic in a way that young children can understand is commendable.