Levar Burton gets Reading Rainbow surprise from Tina Fabrique
levar burton got the kind of daytime TV interruption that only a legacy children’s show can pull off. Tina Fabrique, the original Reading Rainbow singer, surprised The View audience with an impromptu version of the theme song during a commercial break.
Fabrique performed from the audience risers while Burton was appearing on the show with Whoopi Goldberg, his Star Trek: The Next Generation costar. The clip landed on Instagram on Thursday, turning a live in-studio moment into a quick reminder of how often Burton’s career returns to Reading Rainbow.
Fabrique’s 1983 Theme Song
1983 is the year the Reading Rainbow theme song debuted alongside the PBS show, and Fabrique’s voice remains tied to that launch. She sang, “Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high. Take a look, it’s in a book, a reading rainbow.” Then she continued, “I can go anywhere. Ways to grow and things to know, a reading rainbow. I can do anything. Take a look, it’s in a book, a reading rainbow.”
Burton has kept that association alive in public appearances. Earlier this week, he called Goldberg his “longtime friend” in a social media post, and the two shared the The View stage while Sara Haines brought up his Reading Rainbow work and the Howard University commencement appearance that put the song back in circulation with a younger crowd.
Burton’s Career Continuum
1977 and 1987-1994 frame the rest of Burton’s TV and film resume, and he used that history to describe how Reading Rainbow fits into it. Speaking to Haines, he said, “It’s extraordinary to think that, throughout the course of my career, I’ve been bale to portray the Black experience in America from our enslavement, to the stars,” and he called Reading Rainbow “in the middle of that continuum.”
May 2025 supplied the friction point in the story: Howard University graduates were filmed singing the Reading Rainbow theme song to Burton while he spoke at commencement. That gives Fabrique’s surprise a second layer — the song is not just a nostalgia cue, it still travels well enough to be used in live rooms and graduation stages alike, and Burton keeps finding audiences that know exactly when to sing along.
