PHOENIX - Liam Jose and Gabriel Murrell of Oshawa, Ontario have become friends over the past few month. They competed in the WrestleMania Reading Challenge regional competition in January. This week, they became traveling buddies as they flew to Phoenix together to compete in the Reading Challenge Finals, representing their hometown Oshawa Public Library.
Saturday, they both became world champions in their grade level. And Sunday, as reward, they'll both be ringside for history at WrestleMania XXVI.
Jose, Murrell and La’Quan Deen of Homestead, Pa., took top honors Saturday morning at Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix as they proved their exceptional reading ability and information retention in front of a panel of Superstar quizmasters, and an audience of family and WWE Universe members.
More than 1,800 libraries in the United States and Canada participated in this year’s WrestleMania Reading Challenge competition, sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association; and WWE, with support from Mattel, Inc. and DK Publishing. Students read 10 items during a 10-week period, then designed and submitted bookmarks with a slogan to encourage reading.
"We have created this program with WWE to reach out to kids and teens that don't normally come to the library, who might not be big readers, and try to turn that around," said Beth Yoke, Executive Director of YALSA. "Literacy is really the building block for all other kinds of success in school. So we want to reach as many kids as we can, try to hook them on reading, get them into the library where materials are free, and make sure that they not just succeed in school, but later in life."
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Credit: WWE.com
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