Cheerio! Books!

If you have young kids, then you’ll probably like a new campaign by Cheerios®. They’re putting six million children’s books inside boxes of cereal this Fall. Their aim is to provide bedtime storybooks for kids ages 3 to 8, and the books will be printed in both English and Spanish. They’ll also be making a financial donation to First Book, a children’s nonprofit that gets books to children from low-income families.

Here are the books included in this year’s campaign:

Junkyard Fort, by Jon Scieszka, and illustrated by David Shannon, Loren Long and Dave Gordon.

Tea for Ruby, by The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser.

Sleepyhead, by Karma Wilson and illustrated by John Segal.

Ballyhoo Bay, by Judy Sierra and illustrated by Derek Anderson.

What's Under the Bed?, written and illustrated by Joe Fenton.

The cereal boxes will have a cut-out window so you can select which book you want.

Here’s a snippet from the Reuters article:

This is the eighth year of the Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories program, and over the past eight years, Cheerios has distributed more than 40 million books inside Cheerios boxes - and given $3.2 million to First Book.

I don’t have young kids, so I won’t be especially buying Cheerios for the books, but I already buy Cheerios, so I’ll probably end up with a book or two. I like the idea of giving books with cereal. How about you? Do you think it’s a good idea? Or just a scheme to get folks to buy the cereal? Or both?