Nerdish Leanings: Book THIS, biddy!

As a child of the 80's, Book It! was the cornerstone of my education. It was such an unbelievably sweet deal.  First of all, you read Encyclopedia Brown, then you get a sweet purple pin, then you get stickers, then you get a PERSONAL PAN PIZZA! Then you burn the roof of your mouth on the blazing hot cheese product, then you cry so loudly that your parents have to take you out of the restaurant and you never get to finish your pizza. Then you understand how unfair the world is, and then you grow into a bitter, soulless husk of an adult.

At least, that was my experience. Apparently, I'm not the only person that harbors hard feelings towards Book It! Some pundits claim that it's bad because it rewards booksmarts with junk food. This is just part of Book It!'s terrible blight on society. Read on for my reasons to be pissed off at Book It!

Did not promote exercise or peer-interaction, unlike every other way to get free pizza available to children

It's not like pizza is a particularly scarce commodity for an enterprising youngster. Between little league teams, birthday parties, and the occasional fake coupon scam, you could probably score free pizza once a week without ever cracking a book. Plus, you might learn important things like "which way around the bases you run in baseball" or "how to carry on a conversation" instead of "Bugs Meany always lies, but never seems to get in trouble for it."

Created a super-race of fat bookworms

Book It! made every trip to pizza hut into a Lovecraftian nightmare. There was always a small brood of hyperobese kids crouched low in one corner, eyes locked on dog-eared copies of Goosebumps books. The grimy glow of faux-tiffany lamplight reflected in cracked red plastic cups bathed them in a sickly, unholy light. Every time that one stirred to turn a page, great rains of greasy crumbs would flow out of their deep neck-fat rolls into their empty personal pan pizza pans. As the hands shot out from around the table to snatch up these precious scraps of hard-earned pizza waste, the light would catch their eyes. These brief glimpses of the color out of space froze my soul to its core. There, but for a few gold star stickers, goes I, I thought.
 

I swear, whenever I had to pass near them to use the bathroom, I could hear them muttering in unison "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Buk't! P'zza h'ut wgah'nagl fhtagn."

Encouraged reading/attempted to undo the cosmos

Everybody knows that reading is for nerds. By trying to gloss over this fundamental truth and associating something cool (pizza) with something totally lame and square (reading), the Book It! program threatens to destroy the lame/cool duality which is the cornerstone of modern scientific understanding.

Incidentally, since I've been out of school for a little while my grasp of the fundamentals of science has gotten a little shaky.

Justin Douglas writes "Nerdish Leanings" for The Bathtub on Monday afternoons.  You can e-mail him at j.d.bathtub@gmail.com.

Comments

[Lauren]

BOOK IT WAS AWESOME, YOU ARE LAME

[KELLYq]

STOP SAYING BIDDY, YOU JACKASS.

[justin]

Lauren,
I actually liked Book It! quite a bit, but you know how much easier it is to be funny when you are mean than when you are nice.

[EmGusk]

they didn't have that at my school =(

BUT my awesome second grade teacher mrs. wright took us to roy rogers and toys, etc. if we read over 25 books (or something, yumi?)

she also put us all on a comma diet, which is the only diet i've stuck to my entire life.