The "Book It" Battle: Why Susan Linn is Trying to Take Away Your Child's Free Pizza

Some children like to read, astounding and titillating adults by quietly pouring over stacks of advanced tomes. Other children are not easy to educate. Incentives can work where commanding threatening and even punishing fail. In 1985 Pizza Hut introduced its Book It program to the Nation, offering Elementary School teachers a welcome hand motivating their fidgety young minds. The system rewards the schoolchildren for reading books with various certificates, trinkets, and the grand prize of the program, coupon for a free personal pizza, a miniature portion served by the major chain.

The Book It program has come under recent attack by Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the group Susan Linn said the pizza for books incentive "epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school. In the name of education, it promotes junk food consumption to a captive audience ... and undermines parents by positioning family visits to Pizza Hut as an integral component of raising literate children."

Linn has made a public call to parents of the 22 million children participating in the program to put pressure on schools to end Book It. She may very well be right, but the long standing and semi-beloved program is not going to go down without a fight. Book It received a Presidential citation in 1988 from Ronal Regan, and packs an advisory board loaded with respected educators.

The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood aims for an idealistic goal spelled out by their title, but is their goal necessary or even possible? Linn points to the recent interest in the growing obesity rate in American children as her incentive to launch the anti-pizza-for-books campaign.

Alex Malick is a recent Indiana University Graduate, but a lifetime ago, he was a fidgeting member of the Book It program. "I remember Book It more than I remember a lot of things about Elementary School," Alex said, "It was fun. When a little kid wins a prize, it's a big deal. I didn't get fat. Have you seen these personal pizzas, they're the size of hamburgers. How can a kid get fat on those?"