The Surprise Inside

When we were younger, my brother and I would battle over the surprise in the cereal box. If it took an eye gouge to win the temporary tattoo out of the corn flakes, so be it. This wasn’t breakfast. This was Fight Club.

Thanks to Cheerios®, kids won’t have to fight over the surprise in each box. In fact, they can share it – and learn from it.

Beginning in late March, specially marked boxes of Cheerios will feature a free book, “1 Zany Zoo,” written by Lori Degman, a special education teacher from Vernon Hills, Ill., and winner of Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories® New Author Contest. The book will be packaged in 2.2 million Cheerios boxes before its Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers hardback launch this summer.

Always dreamed of becoming a children’s book author like Degman, but not sure how to get started? This year’s Cheerios’ New Author Contest opens on March 15 and runs through June 15. And for the first time, Cheerios will be accepting entries written in English or Spanish. The winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize, a book deal from Simon & Schuster and nationwide distribution of his or her book in boxes of Cheerios in 2012. To learn more, visit www.spoonfulsofstories.com.

Over the past eight years, Cheerios’ Spoonfuls of Stories program has given away more than 40 million free children’s books in boxes of cereal and has donated $3.2 million to nonprofit First Book®, which provides books to low-income families.

Breakfast and books – it’s a balanced morning!

By Nicole Plegge, Lifestyle Blogger for SmartParenting