A real prize from the cereal box By Edan Goode

I can still clearly remember walking slowly up and down the cereal aisle as a kid, choosing the box I wanted based on the prize inside. (My prize-among-prizes was a Jackson 5 LP!) Being the well-behaved and somewhat pent-up child I was, I dutifully ate only one bowl of cereal a day, knowing my prize awaited at the very bottom of the box which I would reach by, oh, day 14. My friends were less restrained and would get a large mixing bowl, dump all the cereal out to snatch the prize. How they got the cereal back into the box in any sort of tidy fashion, I do not know!

My children also judge a cereal by its prize. It’s human, child nature, I guess. However, now that I’m a parent, I really resent the blatant materialism and commercialism of the whole bribe-for-purchase concept. And the prizes? Well, if they last five minutes, I’m surprised. That’s why, dear cereal-eaters, I was glad to hear that the folks at Cheerios were going to provide BOOKS as the prize! I had to spread the word.

Starting November 1 and running until the six million books run out (which could be early December, so hurry), Cheerios is putting one of five children’s books in each box of regular Cheerios (the yellow box). The books are geared toward children ages 3 – 8 and are written in both english and spanish. The titles are: Chaucer’s First Winter, All the Word, The Purple Kangaroo, No T. Rex in the Library and Jump!

Why is Cheerios doing this? It’s part of their Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories (R) Program to foster a love of reading. How nice!

Recently, Cheerios fielded a survey to examine the role reading plays in family life. Some of the key findings include:

Although two-thirds (67%) of moms said they read to their children at least once a day and eight in ten moms (81%) started reading to their child before their first birthday, a quarter (26%) said they only read together a few times a week.
Nearly two-thirds (61%) of moms said “busy schedules” prevent them from spending more time reading with their kids.

Cheerios hopes that the simple act of putting books in boxes encourages families to read more – even if it means squeezing in a story at the breakfast table. Fine by me. Plus, a book has to be a heck of a lot easier to access in a box than some little trinket!