For one month in the UK, McDonald’s will become that country’s biggest retailer of children’s books, giving out copies of Michael Morpurgo’s Mudpuddle Farm series with Happy Meals. Kinda cool or “cynical marketing ploy” – you be the judge. Personally, I’m down with it.
About Travis JonkerTravis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
I think it’s a great idea. They’ve done it in Australia before too. It was little hand sized books on dinosaurs from memory. Lots of kids who don’t have any access to books have access to Happy Meals.
How could anyone think it a cynical marketing ploy? As someone whose kids just came home from the grandparents’ with a couple crappy plastic chipmunks, I am ALL FOR McDonalds putting ACTUALLY DECENT things in Happy Meals…
Anything to get books in the hands of kids over useless plastic toys I can go for.
They do this every October in Sweden. When we lived there, I would have happy meals for lunch and the kids would eat there. The quality of authors and books were amazing. In fairness, Taco Bell has a board book by Katie Cooke right now for the under 3 meal.
I’d much rather the kids get books than cheap toys made from slave labor in third-world countries. Plus the toys break after 10 minutes of playing with them!