Bikes for books: SMG gives a push to get school students into the cycle of reading

The Commercial Appeal Business news centerpiece

December 18, 2008

A banner in the lunchroom of Carnes Elementary School offers simple advice: Be the Best You Can Be.

SMG, the company that manages such local venues as Memphis Cook Convention Center and Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, hopes it’s providing students an incentive to do that.

For the second year in a row, SMG sponsored the Bikes for Books program at Carnes. Sixty bikes were provided last year, and this year 75 students in kindergarten through the fifth grade were given new bicycles, helmets and locks for reading the most books and scoring consistently high in the school’s Accelerated Reader curriculum … (read more)