Beloved 'Reading Rainbow' returns after nearly 20 years with new host Mychal Threets

 After nearly 20 years, the beloved, long-running children's series "Reading Rainbow" is back, this time on the KidZuko YouTube channel.

The first of four episodes hosted by Mychal Threets, a librarian and literacy advocate, will be released Saturday at 10 a.m. Eastern.

The others will drop on subsequent Saturdays at the same time. Adam DeVine, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Gabrielle Union and Jamie Chung will appear, along with Rylee Arnold and Ezra Sosa from "Dancing with the Stars."

Threets, who goes by Mychal the Librarian on social media, steps into the shoes of original host LeVar Burton. Threets broke the reboot news Tuesday on his channels. KidZuko released a trailer.

"I was raised on Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton is my hero," Threets wrote on Instagram. "I am a reader, I am a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow so powerfully made us believe we belong in books, we belong everywhere."

The original "Reading Rainbow" premiered in 1983 and became a wildly successful approach to using television to inspire children's love of reading and build connections between kids and books.

It ended production in 2006, winning a Peabody Award and 26 Emmys. KidZuko is operated by Sony Pictures Television.

News of the digital-only series, with accompanying vertical videos, comes as the federal government has eliminated $1.1 billion allocated to public broadcasting.

The original series ran on public television stations around the country and was used often in schools.

Associated Press