In the 1990s, kids were given a tasty incentive to pick up a book and read. The mission, should they choose to accept it, was to read a certain amount each month to earn a button, stickers, and a free personal pan pizza. Now, ’90s kids can offer this same challenge to their own children, because Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT Summer Reading Program has officially returned.

The BOOK IT program is a free reading incentive tool for parents and teachers to help encourage youngsters to read recreationally during the summer. While back in the day participants manually filled out forms to track their progress, parents today can do so on an app. The app can also redeem rewards for free pizza throughout the summer. Enrollment begins on May 1, 2026.

Brief History of BOOK IT

Per The Takeout, the history of the BOOK IT program begins in the mid-1980s with then-president of Pizza Hut Arthur Gunther and marketing executive Bud Gates. As President Ronald Reagan encouraged businesses to promote education, Gunther wanted to participate. He was inspired by his son’s struggle with literacy as a child. With that in mind, he developed the program to reward young kids for reading. Kids from pre-K through sixth grade would get a free personal pan pizza if they reached certain monthly reading benchmarks. This not only encouraged kids to read for free pizza, but also got their parents to order food for themselves while they were there.

The program would continue in various forms for 40 years, and has had a lasting legacy with many Millennials. Many enjoy remembering finishing up a Goosebumps, Encyclopedia Brown, or other book series of their youth to get a free one-topping six-inch pie.

There are critics of the Pizza Hut BOOK IT program, though. Many argue that reading should be encouraged for its own sake. There is also understandable concern about linking a child’s education to a national fast food pizza chain. Others argue that, in an age when children’s reading skills are declining nationally, such incentive programs can still help. After all, many adults on social media today credit BOOK IT for making them readers.

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How to get kids to read more (pizza optional)

There are other ways to boost a child’s literacy without pizza (though pizza goes well with everything). Aside from continuing story time with younger kids, parents can still bond with their elementary-aged children by playing word games with them such as Scrabble or Boggle. 

Another way to join your child is to share their interests. If they want to read a young adult book they’ve picked out, consider reading it too. It’ll create something to bond over as a “family book club.” After you both finish it, you can discuss the novel over a fun dinner out, whether at Pizza Hut elsewhere.

A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a  gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing. 

Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold. 

A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen. 

Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing. 

Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to  loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth. 

Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:

Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis 

Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community

Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or  in one of 60   countries where we work around the globe

Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door 

Shop or donate at your local Habitat ReStore

Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone. 

Visit habitat.org/open-door to learn more and get involved today. 

With the latest Michael Jackson biopic taking the box office by storm, the late singer and his work are back in the pop culture zeitgeist. Now, even more lore has been added to the conversation, courtesy of Jackson’s longtime personal sound engineer, Matt Forger.

In an interview with Anthony Marinelli, Forger revealed the inspiration behind the character Annie in “Smooth Criminal,” saying that while on tour with the Jackson 5, each of the brothers took a CPR class, where they practiced on a Resusci Anne doll. Part of the protocol was asking, “Annie, are you okay? Are you okay, Annie?” to check a patient’s condition.

“That catchphrase sort of stayed in his memory,” Forger said, noting it as one of many examples of Jackson’s innate gift for songwriting. Like many of the greats, Jackson was able to expertly pinpoint hooks with the most emotional punch and build out full-blown stories from there.

In the song lyrics, we get a story of a woman attacked in her apartment by a “smooth criminal,” who breaks in through the window and then violently strikes the victim. By the second verse, Annie is being resuscitated, seemingly to no avail.

The doll has a fascinating, dark history

Anne’s story began in France in the late 1880s, when the body of an unidentified teenage girl was found in the River Seine. Unlike the case in “Smooth Criminal,” there was no evidence of violence at the scene. Presumably, the girl had taken her own life. Death masks were still a common ritual, and one was created for her to immortalize the eerily calm expression she left behind, as some legends say. It became so popular that it was mass-produced.

Fast forward to the late 1950s, when Norwegian toy maker and publisher Åsmund S. Laerdal was commissioned to create a realistic, life-sized manikin for training people in the new mouth-to-mouth resuscitation method. He recalled seeing one of these masks in his in-laws’ home and felt it was the perfect expression for the dummy.

Today, Resusci Anne is also known as “the most kissed girl in the world”  since millions of trainees have performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her over the decades. 

You would think........

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