With a diverse young cast and a lot more dancing, a reboot of the beloved series will be livestreaming, inviting children to interact virtually.

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In a bustling kitchen in Upper Manhattan, Kendall Joseph, a young actor wearing fire-engine-red oven mitts, stood poised by the stove. As a sprightly song played and a director shouted “Action!,” he opened the oven and withdrew a baking pan.

Rolling cameras focused on the treat inside: a chocolate cake shaped like a butterfly.

“Remember? ‘Butterfly in the Sky?’” Isabella Wager, another young performer, remarked when the filming was over.

The cake won’t evoke memories for young children, but it may inspire nostalgia in their parents. Wager was referring to the theme song for “Reading Rainbow,” the literacy-themed PBS children’s show that ended its 23-year run in 2006, having earned 26 Emmy Awards. (Reruns aired until 2009.) Created to instill a love of reading by introducing authors and their work — and the wider world they explore — the series, hosted by LeVar Burton, debuted with an animated sequence featuring a neon-colored butterfly that morphed into a book.

This whimsical cake was a small reminder, or an Easter egg, in what was being shot on a recent afternoon: a segment of “Reading Rainbow Live,” a reboot that both imitates and reinterprets the original show.

“This came to me almost like chicken soup or a warm glass of milk on a cold winter day,” Steven Beer, the reboot’s creator and executive producer, said during a video call. During a pandemic’s chaos, he added, “what better moment to take something that was simple and pure and lo-fi and to bring that forth to be the next chapter in the ‘Reading Rainbow’ story?”

But while “Reading Rainbow Live” may be lo-fi in concept — using picture books as a springboard for learning and creativity — it is high-tech in delivery. Produced by Ohana Pictures in partnership with Buffalo Toronto Public Media (the organization that operates WNED PBS, which was instrumental in developing the original “Reading Rainbow”), the new series won’t air on television but online.

On Sunday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, audiences can livestream its first event on Looped, a digital platform that was established in 2019 to facilitate one-on-one communication between celebrities and their fans. (Viewers can also stream the content after the premiere.) Here, though, young viewers won’t chat with pop stars but with authors, other guests and a rotating crew of musically gifted hosts, the Rainbows, who include Joseph and Wager.

Viewers, however, won’t be interacting with Burton, who is not participating; starting in 2011, WNED filed multiple lawsuits against him, eventually settled, involving rights to the brand. And while Beer said he admired Burton, he did not approach him for the reboot, developing it, rather, “to be a more active and engaging formulation of the classic series.”

Amy Guglielmo, an educator, children’s book author and the new series’s creative director, emphasized that the goal in casting the show was to build “an ensemble of talented individuals.” “And,” she added, “we love the idea of this being like a book club.”

In the 25-minute premiere, families will first encounter the Rainbows at their clubhouse. As in the original series, the premiere will present a reading of a picture book — Katey Howes’s “Be a Maker,” a celebration of invention — along with segments in which children report on their own favorite titles. A mix of live and recorded segments, it will also feature a visit to an invention convention.

Unlike the old show, however, “Reading Rainbow Live” will incorporate skits and original songs into every event, as well as a dance break (Wager, the Rainbows’ dance captain, choreographs all the movement) and multiple invitations to do more than watch.

“The movement is slower to accommodate kids watching it,” Wager said. “It’s not really complicated, crazy tricks.”

A separate 25-minute after-show is to follow, offering an interactive story time, art projects, more dancing, singalongs and six suites, or chat rooms, in which young audience members (the target ages are 4 to 8) can meet the Rainbows and talk to authors. If Burton was like your children’s most charismatic English teacher, the youthful Rainbows — one is still in college — are more like their coolest babysitters or camp counselors.

All this comes at a price: Standard tickets for household viewing cost $9.99; interactive tickets that allow children to appear onscreen and gain access to the after-show’s six suites are $14.99. (Parents buying these must submit releases if their children are minors.) All ticket holders can later stream the event on demand for 30 days at readingrainbowlive.com.

While the cost isn’t unusual for a streamed event, the creative team acknowledged that it could be an obstacle for families who are used to getting PBS-affiliated projects free.

“We are actively reaching out to potential partners to help us to give access to those who can’t afford $9.99 to attend,” Beer said. In the meantime, his nonprofit venture is supported by contributions. It is also something of a family enterprise: An entertainment lawyer who is WNED’s outside counsel, Beer knew Guglielmo because she was his son Maxwell’s kindergarten teacher. Now Maxwell Beer, an accomplished composer, a Rainbow and the show’s music director, writes its upbeat pop songs with the lyricist Kenny Harmon. Even the Beers’ Havanese poodle, Frankie, has a role onscreen.

The series’s most important asset is that it “engages kids in real time,” said Nancy Hammond, Toronto Buffalo Public Media’s chief operating officer. Children might walk away while watching TV, she added. “But ‘Reading Rainbow Live’ is going to keep kids’ attention because they’re going to constantly be interacting with the Rainbows.”

Some children have already connected with the show, as Guglielmo has used social media to ask youngsters for videos of their own songs about books and for photos of their favorite spots to read. (The most unusual was with the family chickens.) A selection will be shown in the premiere event. The premiere will also feature a very young guest author: Sammie Vance, 13, who at 8 started a drive to have “buddy benches” built from recycled plastic for her school’s playgrounds.

The first event shows other innovators who are “kid inventors,” said Bat-Sheva Guez, the premiere’s director. This should lead viewers to go beyond thinking, “‘Oh, I can be an inventor when I grow up,’ which is what the original show would do,” she added. “Now, it’s like, ‘Oh, I can be an inventor now.’”

The new series also emphasizes diversity, in casting and in the highlighted books, seeking artists and authors “that may have been overlooked and that have not been represented traditionally,” Guglielmo said. “Look, Grandma! Ni, Elisi!” by the Native American author Art Coulson, which is also part of the first event, features a Cherokee boy.

But the creative team is not averse to classics. Guglielmo plans to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Ezra Jack Keats’s “The Snowy Day,” one of the first American picture books to focus on a Black child, by pairing it with a recent work.

After the first event, the producers plan to develop the show further, based on viewer feedback and whether the pandemic recedes. Although they are offering just one event a month for the 10-episode first season, they would like to have a weekly schedule eventually. They have also not ruled out a future television series. But while very young children remain unvaccinated against Covid-19, they hope that “Reading Rainbow Live” will help knock down the walls that screens usually create.

“In a complicated time, I’m excited to keep it simple,” Beer said. “Let’s read. Let’s sing. Let’s dance. Let’s come together.”