Tina Fabrique surprised the studio audience on The View during a commercial break and sang the Reading Rainbow theme song while LeVar Burton sat in the room watching his reunion with Whoopi Goldberg unfold.
Fabrique sang from the audience risers between segments of Burton’s interview with the cohosts, starting with, “Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high. Take a look, it’s in a book, a reading rainbow,” and then continuing, “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.”
The moment carried extra weight because the song has been tied to Reading Rainbow since it debuted with the PBS series in 1983, and Burton has spent much of his career moving across some of the most recognizable chapters in Black television history. Sara Haines brought up his work on the educational show and his appearance at Howard University’s May 2025 commencement ceremony, where graduates sang the same theme to him while he spoke.
Burton told the audience it was “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,” pointing back to his role in the 1977 miniseries Roots and forward to Reading Rainbow, which he praised for occupying an educational space “in the middle of that continuum.”
That arc is what made the surprise singalong land so cleanly. Burton’s television career ran from Roots to Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he held a lead role from 1987 to 1994, while Goldberg had a recurring role as Guinan on the same series. The onstage reunion on The View gave Fabrique’s spontaneous performance a built-in audience and a clear point of emotion: Burton is still being recognized for the work that made him a fixture in American TV, and the theme song that followed him into classrooms and commencement halls is still doing its job.
