Melissa Etheridge Gets Wild About Reading

My son’s new favorite TV show is PBS Kids’ Between the Lions, which teaches early-reading skills through the tales of a pair of lions and their cubs who run a library. It’s pedagogically one of the best educational shows around—though I’ll continue to save the top spot for the venerable Sesame Street. Between the Lions picks up where Sesame leaves off, however, and takes kids into vowel sounds, word components, and mnemonics like “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”

I was thrilled, therefore to see that Melissa Etheridge guest stars in the episode “Step by Step,” where she reads a poem to one of the characters. She also does a short promo for the show in which she asserts “If you get a child wild about reading, you get a child wild about learning.” Bravo, PBS, for showcasing a lesbian mom, despite the ultra-right’s uproar about the Postcards from Buster episode that featured a lesbian family.