Reading's rewards include pizza

Pizza Hut has launched its summer Book It! program, which rewards children who meet their personal reading goals with a free personal pizza each month.

Parents of children in pre-K through sixth grade can sign up now through the app for "Summer of Stories.

It's a "cheesy gimmick" that will encourage kids to read easy books and eat a high-fat diet, grumped Alfie Kohn in 2007. Rewards kill intrinsic motivation, he argues. In a press release for the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, he wrote: “ Dangling pizza in front of kids as a reward for reading, much as one might use treats to house-train a puppy, reflects a completely discredited theory of motivation. Indeed, by teaching children that reading is just a means to an end, the program is likely to be not merely ineffective but positively harmful.” 

Gee, I think it's kind of fun.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which mails a free book every month to children from birth to age five, sends out  3 million books each month, writes literacy coach Kristen McQuillan. The singer's father had no formal education and never learned to read or write.

Children need lots of practice to become fluent readers, she writes. The Imagination Library "gives children repeated exposure to language through stories, which are often richer than what they hear in everyday conversation."