Reading, With Extra Cheese: Remembering Pizza Hut’s ‘Book It!’
Reporting on the 40th anniversary of the popular pizza literacy program sent one writer on a mozzarella-scented memory trail.
by Sarah Bahr
It was late one night last spring, and I was Googling cultural phenomena that would mark milestone anniversaries in 2024, as a sleepless reporter does.
Fifty years old, as in things that had arrived in 1974? The Rubik’s Cube. Skittles. Dungeons & Dragons.
From 1984, 40 years ago? “Ghostbusters.” The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Pizza Hut’s Book It! reading program, which offers pizza as an incentive to entice kids to read.
Huh, I thought. I wonder how long that thing lasted. I had been a Book It! kid growing up, reading half a dozen books in a week, filling up a punch card and earning a certificate redeemable for a sweet, sweet six-inch pepperoni personal pan pizza (never plain cheese, I had standards).
I was shocked: The program was still around.
Of course, it had undergone some changes since my elementary school days: Gone were the punch cards; certificates were now digital. There was an option for home-schooled students to participate. Book It! even had accounts on Instagram and X.
But what other literacy program — started by a restaurant, no less — had lasted 40 years?
This, I knew, was a story.
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