The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is running a cross-border campaign to try and convince the Scholastic Corp. to put books back in their book advertisements to children. In case you don't remember, Scholastic is the company that makes the flyers that your teachers used to give you in elementary school. You could pick out books and, if you could convince your parents to buy them, your school would get some free books out of the deal.
If it helps jog your memory the flyers look sorta like this
The problem is that while scholastic's tag line is still "Helping Children Around the World to Read and Learn" the flyer is increasingly filled with stuff - marker sets, glitter things, pens and stuffed animals and various toys, plus an assortment of 'books' based on TV series, books based on consumer products (barbie) and (as you will see) the M&M's Kart Racing Wii where you can "Choose your favorite M&M's character and race one of 7 vehicles on 10 different tracks - ages 5 and up" and it is reduced from 39.95 to only 29.95 (order now kids).
So whichever side of the border you live on you can now Contact Scholastic and tell them to F*** off or ... well... at least ask them to knock it off. If they are going to be given the opportunity to sell things to elementary school students while they are in school they should be books, or at the very least educational.
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