It's official! The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge ended on Friday with a bang (literally, there are fireworks on the website) and kids have set a new world record for summer reading: 304,749,681 minutes. Kids surpassed last year's record of 176,438,473 minutes with ease just two months into the challenge.
You can check out the website to view the top 100 schools and their total minutes logged. Plus, the top 20 schools that read the most minutes and will be featured in the 2015 Scholastic Book of World Records. Two schools will receive special recognition this year: the #1 elementary school, Boggy Creek Elementary School in Kissimmee, FL, will receive a visit from bestselling author-illustrator David Shannon; and the #1 middle school, Beacon Cove Intermediate School in Jupiter, FL, will receive a visit from bestselling author Gordon Korman. Congratulations to both schools!
The program saw a record number of kids, teachers, and parents participating this year and we're so happy to see such a strong commitment to reading. We've got some highlights and numbers to share with you below. Thanks for participating and congratulations to everyone who contributed to this great program!
The Summer Reading Challenge by the numbers:
- 304,749,681 total minutes read (compared to 176,438,473 in 2013)
- 1,310,163 registered students (compared to 963,005 in 2013)
- 12,770 registered schools (compared to 5,462 in 2013)
- Schools represented all 50 states and 30 countries
- 46 schools read more than 1 million minutes and 406 schools each read at least 100,000 minutes.
- The top five states with most minutes read are: Florida (77,402,944 reading minutes), Texas (57,443,905 reading minutes), North Carolina (15,153,741 reading minutes), New Jersey (11,038,696 reading minutes) and New York (10,871,417 reading minutes)
- 4 U.S. Governors and 42 Gubernatorial Spouses signed on as Summer Reading Ambassadors and helped spread the important messages about children reading throughout the summer.
- Scholastic donated more than 23,000 books to children as part of the Reading Ambassador statewide efforts to promote reading.
