Last month, Butterfly in the Sky, a documentary about the beloved children’s television show Reading Rainbow and its host LeVar Burton, opened in theaters. The trailer looks absolutely spectacular and after reading this wonderful review by Leah Schnelbach on Reactor Mag, Butterfly in the Sky has risen to the top of my watchlist. Here’s an excerpt from the review:

The documentary opens with a montage of those kids and their mini book reviews. We see the children as they were in the ‘80s and ‘90s (at my screening this was met with peals of affectionate laughter) with cuts to some of them as adults talking about their experience on the show. The filmmakers check in with them a few times and we get to hear about the adult lives they’ve created since their appearances. Butterfly in the Sky follows the usual documentary shape, where the filmmakers check in with producers and writers working through the development of the show, and cut between people with conflicting memories to gradually build the story of the show. This section culminates in LeVar Burton being hired (but I’ll come back to that in a second), shows us the plateau of the show’s success, and then gets a little elegiac as it talks about the show’s end. But unlike its most obvious pairing, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Butterfly doesn’t have to end on a sigh for a lost era. It’s able to carry us into the future by giving space to the adult lives of those former book recommenders, to Jason Reynolds, a childhood fan who grew up to be a celebrated author (and the Library of Congress’ 2020-2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature!), and to Mr. Burton and the show’s producers to talk about their lives after the show.

That being said, it’s kind of tricky to figure out how to go and see because it’s a limited release! And it seems like I might have missed its stint in NYC and will have to wait until it lands somewhere on the stream-scene. If you’re interested in trying to catch it in the theaters, this seems like a good place to refresh.