The 10-year-old Lein van Boxtel from Schijndel can call himself the reading champion of Brabant. She read a piece on Sunday from one of her favorite books and with that she won the provincial final of this national competition. Now she can participate in the National Reading Competition on 20 May and she is looking forward to that. “I really enjoy doing it. I didn’t expect that I would win.”
Lein is a real bookworm and she can also read as the best. Sunday she read from the book Can it be even worse? from Judith Koppens. “It is a very nice book to read out,” says Lein. “I can empathize with the main character because he is about as old as I am. So I can imagine how she feels.”
She took it against 641 other Brabant readers, but the jury thought Lein was the best. “She alternated well between telling and the dialogues. Lein made very good contact with the audience and had a convincing way of reading. She really took you into the story.”
One of the jury members was the Bossche children’s book writer Jacques Vriens. Lein’s mother knows him. “When we heard that he was there, we all had something like ‘wow’, but the children don’t have that,” she says. Lein indeed has no idea who Vriens is to her mother says that he is the author of the books of Master Jaap. “Ohh, is he?”
“I’m going to practice a lot of reading aloud for my parents, friends and family.”
Yet for the tough Lein it does not seem to decide who is in the jury and for how many people they have to read. “I just have a lot of fun with it. I don’t find it very exciting.” Although she will prepare well for the national competition. “I’m going to practice reading a lot for my parents, friends and family and for the director of my school.”
Lein will read from the same book as she did on Sunday, but there will be an exciting element. All candidates are sent a book that they can already read at home. “During the competition, the candidates have to read next to each other on the podium. They only get to hear what you have to read spontaneously at that time,” her mother explains.
“I can take my whole class with me in a bus.”
Lein Noord-Brabant can represent on 20 May during the National Reading Competition Group 7 and 8 in Utrecht. “And I can take my whole class with me. In a bus too,” she says full of enthusiasm. “That is just arranged for us. I think that is special.”
In the Brabant final, Lein van Boxtel won first place, Manou Blokdijk from Etten-Leur and Lynn ten Hoedt from Beers became third:
