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South African 'Reading Race' champion leafs through 158 books

This year's winner of the Johannesburg "Reading Race" managed to get through 158 books in just ten months, it has been revealed

The annual event, which takes place at the Rhodes Park Library in the eastern part of the South African city and is now in its 15th year, is designed to encourage children to read more, according to Johannesburg's official website.

While the eventual winner notched up an impressive 158 books, a total of 16 children were acknowledged for their efforts.

Edith Khuzwayo, a librarian at the Rhodes Park facility, said that while the library undoubtedly benefitted from the publicity brought by the race, the primary aim of the event was indisputably to highlight the joys of reading.

She told the website: "The Reading Race is used to lure people to the library and also for kids to pick up the culture of reading - that's the main reason for the race, to make children read."

This year's winner brings to the fore another of the event's benefits – learning. Natasha Kruger, who read her wining tally between February and November, could not speak English before the competition. An Afrikaans speaker, she used the competition to teach herself how to read a new language.

Ms Khuzwayo said: "Natasha has done a great thing. She came here from an Afrikaans school and couldn't read English. We started her off with a basic English book and now she can read extremely well."

While children are the focus of the initiative, the doors are also open to older people with a desire to improve their literacy skills through either tuition or self-teaching.

Ms Khuzwayo said: "We do have English classes where we see foreigners and older people who are eager to learn English and to take out books to read. the children are still a main focus for us."

The general message is simple: read and literacy will improve. By turning what is an essential cornerstone of any society into a competition, literacy rates could well be improved among a number of generations.

Put simply, Ms Khuzwayo says: "If you read every day, your level of reading will increase."

Furthermore, an increase in literacy rates and general desire to read can only spell good news for the country's publishers.