So if you are my age or younger or the parent of someone my age or younger or pretty much a whole lot of people, you will remember Reading Rainbow fondly. What an amazingly awesome show it was.

And now it is an amazingly awesome app.

Katherine and I downloaded it this morning and we were able to go on a tour of a submarine and hear an Anansi the Spider book without leaving the couch.

Levar Burton remains the host and he sounds exactly the same. If I closed my eyes I could have been in my childhood home. He reads the books and takes children, via video, on amazing adventures in just the same way that he did when I was young.

The difference is all the coolness happens on the iPad. And it’s more interactive.

There are two downsides that I do have to mention.

One is that all the press claims that the app is free but in order to get more than one book you need to sign up for a subscription. They are running a great special right now though so the cost is very reasonable for what you get.

The other major problem is that the app is crashing on the original iPad. Apparently though the app is so cool that Katherine dealt with all the stopping and starting for quite awhile before she decided she had had enough. Hopefully, this problem is being fixed behind the scenes as I type because I can’t wait to explore more books.

So… if you have a more recent version of the iPad, go immediately to the iTunes store and if your iPad is a bit older, wait a day or two and then go immediately to the iTunes store. The Reading Rainbow app is not to be missed.