FOR some schoolchildren it can be a struggle to get through one book.

But 11-year-old bookworm Yasmeen Khan breezed through up to six books a day as part of a challenge that saw her clocking up an impressive 202 books in just nine weeks.

The year six pupil at St Andrew’s Primary School in Headington, Oxford, beat thousands of other youngsters to be named the South East regional winner of the Most Books Read award in the inaugural Read for My School competition.

Yasmeen’s total was the second highest out of nine regions in the country. The highest number of books read by one child was 272 in the South West.

Yasmeen, from Headington, told the Oxford Mail she was excited when she found out she had won and said: “I almost ran around the garden waving my arms and screaming.

“It is quite strange really because everyone in the class is now treating me like I am some kind of celebrity.

“I think it was easy because I had a system – I would start a couple of books a day, be in the middle of a couple of books and finish a couple a day.

“I enjoy reading because it can distract me from that day if I didn’t really like it.”

Her favourite book that she completed was Pegasus and the Flame by Kate O’Hearn. Her other top page turners were:

  • All six Harry Potter books by JK Rowling
  • Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  • The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
  • Potty Politics by Terry Deary
  • Gorilla City by Charlie Small
  • Earth-shattering Earthquakes by Anita Ganeri
  • Percy Jackson & the Titan’s Curse, Rick Riordan
  • Blood Red Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick
  • Spilling the Beans on the Cat’s Pyjamas by Judy Parkinson

The youngster was crowned at a ceremony on Wednesday in Waterstones bookshop in Guildford, Surrey.

She won a Kindle e-reader, a £30 Waterstones book voucher, a set of eight recommended reads and 100 books for her school.

Now the competition is over, Yasmeen has cut her reading down to two books a day.

Christine Walker, school librarian, said: “Yasmeen has always read a lot more books than other children.

“For the last three years we have given her a school prize because of the number of books she has read, but the competition has encouraged her to read even more. She now enjoys reading the online books.”

A total of 242 schools took part in Read for My School from January 21 to March 22, with pupils logging more than 66,000 books on the competition website.

Children were asked questions about the books they had read to prove they had completed them.

Headteacher Sue Baker said: “It is an amazing achievement for Yasmeen. Reading is such a fantastic thing to do, you can get so much pleasure from it.

“The competition was a great way of encouraging the school to read.”

The regional winners will have a chance of winning two national awards, due to be presented on June 18 at a ceremony in London.

Read for My School is run by The Pearson Foundation and Booktrust with support from the Department for Education