Best-Selling Authors Receive Award for Planting Trees

04/20/98
NEBRASKA CITY, NEB., March 20, 1998--The best-selling authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul and their publisher, Health Communications, Inc., of Deerfield Beach, Florida, have received a 1998 Promise to the Earth Award from The National Arbor Day Foundation, Nebraska City, Neb. The authors honored for their environmental contributions are Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Hanoch McCarty and Meladee McCarty.

The award will be presented at the Arbor Day Foundation's 26th annual Arbor Day Awards in recognition of outstanding work in the cause of tree planting, conservation, and environmental stewardship. The Promise to the Earth Award recognizes sustained corporate commitment and national leadership by those who join with The National Arbor Day Foundation on special projects in education and in the planting of trees.

Health Communications and the authors of A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the fourth edition of the original best-seller, received the award for helping The National Arbor Day Foundation plant 200,000 trees in America's national forests. Their gift came in the form of a $200,000 check, which was a donation of a portion of sales of Chicken Soup. In this edition of the popular book, Health Communications, Inc., also included the opportunity for readers to personally support tree planting and the Arbor Day Foundation.

Past winners of the Promise to the Earth Award include Capital Cities/ABC Inc., Fox Broadcasting, CBS Broadcast Group, NBC TV, Deluxe Corporation, The Walt Disney Company, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, and Cinergi Productions and Hollywood Pictures Home Video. Each winner has been recognized for creatively carrying through on a promise to significantly improve the environment.

"The authors and publisher of A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul have certainly lived up to the standards of this award," said John Rosenow, president of The National Arbor Day Foundation. "We are happy to recognize them for their commitment to give something back to our planet's resources, to help replenish the trees that give us things as diverse as natural beauty and the wood for the paper on which books are printed."

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, best-selling authors of the original Chicken Soup for the Soul, are motivational speakers who have dedicated their lives to enhancing the development of others. For the fourth edition of this book, they have teamed up with Hanoch McCarty, president of Hanoch McCarty & Associates, and Meladee McCarty, a program specialist for the Sacramento County Office of Education who finds placements for severely handicapped children.

The National Arbor Day Foundation is a nonprofit education organization that helps people plant and care for trees.