The “Rapid Readers,” a team of fourth and fifth graders from Margaret Mead Elementary, won the district’s Global Reading Challenge held on March 3 at the Redmond Public Library.

They competed against the western-region champions, the “Golden Unicorns” from Keller Elementary. The Rapid Readers team included Ryan Gradinaru, Aaditya Saravanan, Daniel Enriquez, Prokriti Basu, Payoja Mabbu and Stephanie Enriquez.

The Global Reading Challenge is sponsored by the King County Library System. The King County Library System chose six books for teams of fourth- and fifth-graders to read and then answer questions about.

The Global Reading Challenge begins with an in-school challenge that narrows all the kids participating at one school down to one team. That school team participates in one of two regional events for the district. The two regional winning teams compete in the district-level challenge. The district winner, the “Rapid Readers,” compete next at a region-wide challenge against students from other school districts. That event will be held at the Bothell Library on March 22 at 4:30 p.m.

This year’s book list included:

“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again” by Frank Cottrell Boyce

“Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library” by Chris Grabenstein

“The One and Only Ivan” by Katherine Applegate

“One for the Murphys” by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

“Snow Treasure” by Marie McSwigan

“Sylvia & Aki” by Winifred Conkling