Pizza Hut Book-It Program: Oh, yeah, it's ON!
1 CommentsBy Lostcheerio on Tuesday, November 06, 2007 at 3:19 PM.
Benny is participating in the Pizza Hut Book-It program. His goal for October was to read 10 books to himself. This goal was set during the days when he could get through one or two chapters of a storybook per night before flipping open the space books and mooning over pictures of Ion and Europa. In fact, during October he read thirty books: the first one was Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang which we read together, alternating chapters, and the rest being Magic Treehouse books. Today was designated the day of the celebratory pizza party, where Benny could march into Pizza Hut with his little reward coupon and earn himself a little pan pizza while the rest of us leap about in a proud, congratulatory way.
The day began in a grey and rainy way as we set out for the violin school with our arms full of violins and dolls.
Both of the children had GREAT lessons, due to the miraculous concentration and boost in the practicing energy this week. Then it was time to go to Pizza Hut, where we were meeting Dad, Ahno, and Ahno's most recent project, Genesis.
The children were, for a change, very hungry and ready to eat. Our waitress said that she had participated in the Book-It program in its first year, when she was in kindergarten.
Here's Benny savoring the sweet, sweet taste of literature:
After lunch, Benny took his empty plate back up to the counter and thanked the bored, irritated crew in the back for having the Book-It program and giving him a free pizza. He vowed to their unlistening ears that he would "keep reading NONSTOP UNTIL I DIE." We also thanked Ahno for buying the rest of us lunch. And we thanked Mary Pope Osborne once again for giving Benny the will to read.
The day began in a grey and rainy way as we set out for the violin school with our arms full of violins and dolls.
Both of the children had GREAT lessons, due to the miraculous concentration and boost in the practicing energy this week. Then it was time to go to Pizza Hut, where we were meeting Dad, Ahno, and Ahno's most recent project, Genesis.
The children were, for a change, very hungry and ready to eat. Our waitress said that she had participated in the Book-It program in its first year, when she was in kindergarten.
Here's Benny savoring the sweet, sweet taste of literature:
After lunch, Benny took his empty plate back up to the counter and thanked the bored, irritated crew in the back for having the Book-It program and giving him a free pizza. He vowed to their unlistening ears that he would "keep reading NONSTOP UNTIL I DIE." We also thanked Ahno for buying the rest of us lunch. And we thanked Mary Pope Osborne once again for giving Benny the will to read.
Labels: pizza hut book-it, reading, rewards
Okay. I give up. Magic Tree House wins. I was wrong to fight it. Tonight Benny cried, yes cried real actual tears, over the fact that we'd accidentaly left the house without the book he was reading. And this was not an Eyewitness book about space, or a Q&A book about African animals, or a Bill Nye study on germs. It was a story, with a plot about people, an actual work of fiction. Up until he read Magic Tree House #1, he had been interested in exactly ZERO novels. Science books, yes. Stories, no. This is a kid who will read high school textbooks on geology and stay up all night doing it. But he would not read... Redwall, or Henry Huggins, or Moomins, or anything ridiculous like that. Now, he cannot be separated from his Magic Treehouse So, I guess I am convinced.I picked up a Magic Tree House a few years ago -- it was #16 I think: The Hour of the Olympics. I got it, with some other books, to read during the 2004 Olympic Games, and I was disappointed because of all this strange, unexplained stuff about Morgan Le Fay, and irritated by the kind of facile, flatly rendered treatment of the material. Benny didn't give a ripe fig about the book, and I put it down with a sneer, deciding it was the literary equivalent of visiting the World Lagoon at Epcot Center and deciding you'd seen Europe.
That was also before I'd been to Disney World and realized it was fun to go to the Epcot World Lagoon and pretend Peru was next to Hungary and watch fireworks. So okay! I didn't get it.
I didn't get the fact that the books are *not* entirely episodic, there are longer plots and mysteries that span multiple novels. Also, there are "Research Guides" that go along with the books, so you can read what the main characters are reading, and see what informs their adventures. What I mostly didn't get was that my child would be charmed by the stories, would be drawn in by the plots -- and really, as long as he's finally reading fiction, what right do I have to complain?
I asked him, "Benny, what are you going to do when you run out of Magic Treehouse books?" and he replied, "I guess I'm going to have to find some other kind of storybook to read!" Any suggestions for what makes a good transition for a non-novel-reader who might just want to finally read a novel?
Labels: books, magic treehouse, reading
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