Young bookworms from across Britain gathered in Newcastle yesterday for the national final of the Kids' Lit Quiz. In a close-fought contest at Newcastle Arts Centre, teams of children sat poised around buzzers as they listened to literature-related questions posed by quizmaster Wayne Mills. After a tense climax, the trophy was lifted by a team of four girls from Cherwell School in Oxford. Breathing down their necks throughout were children from 12 other areas, including a team from Dame Allan's School in Newcastle - Phoebe Walker, Rosie Bendix, Daniel Wise and Mayank Banerjee - who won the regional final at Gosforth Central Middle School last week. The Kids' Lit Quiz was designed by Mr Mills, a New Zealand educationalist, as a way of making books and reading exciting for children on the verge of their teens when many of them, particularly boys, are in danger of losing interest. Pioneered in his native New Zealand, where it has become a big national event, Mr Mills has recently striven to extend the quiz to include the English-speaking world. The first UK contest was held in Newcastle last year and the winning team, from Dunblane in Scotland, then travelled to New Zealand to contest a Lit Quiz world championship. Dunblane won there too. National co-ordinator Eileen Armstrong, who is learning resource centre manager at Cramlington High School, Northumberland, said interest in the quiz nationally and in the region had been growing. "We had 21 teams of year seven and eight pupils taking part in the North-East this time with interest from all across the region. "The questions are quite hard but we had a Middle Earth section this year, all about The Lord of the Rings, and quite a few teams got 10 out of 10." Teams pay £40 to enter the competition and the winners get trophies and the opportunity to travel to New Zealand where, next year, they will also encounter teams from other parts of the world. Mr Mills, who sets the questions and flies around the world as quizmaster, was jubilant after yesterday's contest. "We had nine teams in the final last year, 13 this time. Our target was to involve 1,000 students around the country and we got 1,096 so we smashed that. "The teams were very good again but the weakest areas this time were book illustration and poetry. Their knowledge wasn't quite so great in those areas." He said the Lit Quiz was also getting established in Canada, Australia, Ireland and China. The UK final takes place in Newcastle because of the new Seven Stories, the Centre for Children's Book which is likely to host the event after it opens next year. | 
Northumberland
