Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The delicious aroma of literacy

bookit

Recently, the Pizza Hut Book It! Reading program for Elementary School kids has come under fire. Critics are saying that it encourages kids to eat unhealthy foods and that it forces parents to go to Pizza Hut as part of raising literate children.

I just want to say that were it not for the Book It! program I would have never eaten Pizza Hut pizza in my entire childhood, save one or two rare occasions. It was always fun to get to go with my mom and we would get our personal pan pizzas and a sticker to put on our Book It! badge for that year, and if we were lucky my mom would even buy some breadsticks to eat with it.

I don't know what critics are suggesting we replace the Book It! program with. A coupon for Wild Oats Market? Perhaps we could just give the kids some money for reading. I'm guessing they aren't going to go buy carrot sticks to reward themselves.

I think what would be really neat would be if we could get some kind of a bidding war going between food service establishments to sponsor the reading program each year. See if we can't up the ante. We are a free market economy right? A little competition couldn't hurt. Maybe we can get these kids a regular size pizza instead of just the personal one. Then mom wouldn't have to buy her own.

2 comments:

Travis said...

It finally makes sense why I am so fat. I love to read and I love to eat. I really never put the two together. Maybe I should quit reading and then I wont get any fatter.

Claire said...

I LOOOOOOOVED Book-it, and am now a Pizza Hut fan for life. Maybe I can sue them for my childhood obesity problems.