September 29, 2016Member News

Children in TX, FL, LA, PA, and GA Logged the Most Reading Minutes in the 2016 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

NEW YORK, NY – This summer, nearly 250,000 children from across all 50 states and 25 countries read 204,594,918 million minutes in the annual Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. The top five U.S. states with the most summer reading minutes read by children are: Texas (43,054,527 reading minutes), Florida (18,414,561 reading minutes),Louisiana (11,130,883 reading minutes), Pennsylvania (10,850,122 minutes) and Georgia(10,147,966 reading minutes). To learn more about the program, visit www.scholastic.com/summer.

Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children’s publishing, education and media company, also announced today the top school in each state and territory that read the most minutes will be featured in Best & Buzzworthy 2017: World Records, Trending Topics and Viral Moments. Each “Best in State” school will receive a commemorative plaque as well as an official Scholastic party kit to celebrate their summer reading achievement.

This year’s Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge theme, “Be a Reading Superhero,” encouraged kids to build their “reading muscles” by reading more and logging their reading minutes to earn virtual rewards. Throughout the 18 weeks of summer, kids unlocked fun digital stories from 19 children’s authors who shared how they became reading superheroes including R.L. Stine, Angela Cervantes, Varian Johnson and more.

As part of this year’s program, #1 The New York Times bestselling author Dav Pilkey (creator of Captain Underpants and the new Dog Man series) signed on as the Scholastic Summer Reading Global Ambassador. To help kids take the “summer leap” into great books, Dav Pilkey hosted the first-ever “Dav Pilkey ‘Be a Reading Superhero Educator Contest’,” which offered educators a chance to win a free summer reading book for every child in their school. More than 4,000 entries were submitted by educators nationwide, and one school from each U.S. State was selected as the winning school – delivering nearly 30,000 new books to students nationwide, thanks to Dav’s generosity.

“This summer, educators and families worked together to help all children take the summer leap into great books to avoid the effects of the summer slide,” said, Michael Haggen, Chief Academic Officer, Scholastic Education. “The 2016 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge was a great success as children around the world read more than 200 million minutes and most importantly, experienced the joy of reading. We congratulate all of the students who discovered their inner ‘reading superhero’ this summer and we are excited to see that passion continue throughout the school year.”

2016 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge highlights:

5,154 schools participated in this year’s Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge.
29 schools read more than 1 million minutes and 379 schools each read at least 100,000 minutes.
To further spread the message of the importance of summer reading, Scholastic launched a traveling Summer Reading Road Trip that brought family reading festivals to kids and families across over 25 U.S cities from May 2, 2016 and running through July 31, 2016.
3 U.S. Governors and 39 Gubernatorial Spouses and 1 Lt. Governor pledged to help spread across the nation the important message about children reading over the summer by signing on as Reading Ambassadors. Scholastic donated 500 books to the school of each Reading Ambassador’s choice (for a total of 21,500 books), and many of the Ambassadors hosted reading events in their respective states.
The Best & Buzzworthy 2017: World Records, Trending Topics and Viral Moments will be available this fall through Scholastic Reading Club, Scholastic Book Fairs and bookstores nationwide (release date: November 2016)