Reading Rainbow’s a US children’s TV show that ran from 1983 until 2006. Levar Burton introduced various guest stars, reading books for child viewers. As a Brit, I understood it to be something like Jackanory; its theme tune apparently has massive resonance for Americans of a certain age. Here is that theme tune, covered by The Doors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBRYsAfchkY
OK, it’s not really The Doors. It’s American comedian Jimmy Fallon, channelling Jim Morrison with spooky accuracy. The voice, the intonation, the stoned swaying lope – all present, correct and perfectly mimicked. And that’s not all that’s bang on. The lyrics themselves, a blend of the original Reading Rainbow theme and lines lifted from various children’s classics, sound wonderfully Doors-y too.
At first, I thought that that was a nifty bit of satire – Fallon parodying the easy rhymes and cod truisms of Morrison’s lyrics, etc. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realised there was far more to it than that. I was forgetting a very simple fact – the best children’s books are also very simply written, and they’re as profound as they are simple and as simple are they are profound.
Here’s a great example – a lovely performance of Mo Willems’ magnificent ‘We Are In A Book’ –
Mortality, meta-fiction and the consolations of literature – all in a couple of hundred words and a handful of illustrations. Wow!
So, I ended up thinking that, by linking his lyrics so explicitly to children’s writing, Fallon’s paying tribute to as much as sending up Morrison. After all, if they bear comparison to such excellent work (Fallon mentions classics ‘The Indian in the Cupboard and ‘The Monster at the End of This Book’, and quotes from ‘Goodnight Moon’ – and of course there’s the Reading Rainbow theme tune itself), they’ve got to be doing something very right indeed.