Reading competition: Feemke Weidner winner in the Kassel district

The Corona pandemic has also had an impact on the German Publishers & Booksellers Association's reading competition, which has been promoting reading and the enjoyment of books for over 50 years. Sixth-graders from secondary schools usually present their reading skills to a larger audience, whether as school or district winners or later in the competition as district winners. This year, however, due to contact restrictions, the reading entries must be uploaded as a video to a digital platform and judged via screen by the jury.

In the past few weeks, the district winners were determined in this way in most of the German states - in five states, the regional winners were allowed to participate directly in the state competition. For the Kassel district, too, nine girls and boys had chosen a passage from their favorite books, which they read aloud in a three-minute entry, created a video of it, and uploaded it to the secure digital platform on the Börsenverein website. From these nine entries, a jury of six has now selected two winners to move on to the state competition in Hesse.

One of the two winners is Feemke Weidner from Edertal Comprehensive School. She had already convinced in the district decision Waldeck-Frankenberg South with an exciting passage from "Emma and the forgotten book" by Mechthild Gläser. For the district competition in Kassel, she had chosen a similarly stirring passage from "Die Duftapotheke" (The Scented Pharmacy) by Anna Ruhe, which she read aloud in a very lively and vivid manner, thus whetting the audience's appetite for the book's further content. Feemke will now represent the Kassel district at the state competition in Hesse in May.