Green, Petty Team Help Get Books to Children; Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories Donates Full Pledge: Nearly 23,000 Books For Team's Run

Business Wire, Oct 10, 2004

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Cheerios(R) and First Book made it a storybook finish at Kansas in Sunday's NASCAR NEXTEL race.

The two had pledged to donate books to kids in low-income families in the Kansas City area depending on how many laps Jeff Green and the #43 Cheerios team completed in Sunday's race. At 43 books per lap completed, that total came to 11,266. A top-10 finish would have doubled that pledge.

Cheerios and First Book, a national children's literacy program, will still make the full donation, though -- 22,962 books -- the total that was promised if Green had completed all 267 laps and finished in the top 10.

"We appreciated the effort put forward by Jeff Green and his team, and we want to make sure all the books get into the hands of children in this area," said Rob Sundy, a spokesperson for Cheerios.

The books-per-lap donation is part of the ongoing Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories(R) program, which gets books into the hands of children. More than 60 percent of low-income families have no books at all in their homes for their children.

"This sure picks our day up knowing a lot of kids are going to be getting new books through the Spoonfuls of Stories program," Green said.

Over the past two years, through its Spoonfuls of Stories program, Cheerios has donated $1 million to First Book, and has distributed more than 10 million books to children across the country.