On the 4 July six teams of four students from around the world tackled ten rounds of literary questions and wowed the audience with their knowledge and team spirit in a wonderful afternoon of the ‘sport of reading.’

Australia was taking part for the first time, Canada had fundraised to enable their school’s student coaches to accompany the team and the New Zealand coach had cut short her UK sabbatical leave to make sure she was there for the world final.

Held in Auckland, the Kids’ Lit Quiz world final was opened by Lady Susan Satyanand.  Her congratulations to all the finalists were echoed by Graeme Aitken Dean of the Faculty of Education at Auckland University. Professor Aitken celebrated the work of quiz master Wayne Mills and highlighted literacy as the most important outcome of education. 

Wayne Mills led the teams through the questions covering themes ranging from mystical objects, villains, machines, and authors to first lines from first chapters. In this round the impossibility of guessing a book’s title after hearing three or four words from the first sentence was disproved at least twice by the amazing Kids’ Lit Quiz competitors.

At some of the world and national finals the team results have been very close but at this, the 21st year of the Kids’ Lit Quiz, there was a very clear winner: Awakeri School from New Zealand! The absolute delight of the students, their coaches, principal and families made a perfect ending to a world class event which is a true celebration of reading.

You can read more about Awakeri School here and about the Kids’ Lit Quiz results here.

report by Linda