Save the Children has teamed up with Scholastic to challenge kids worldwide to read for fun, for a team and for a good cause.

The Scholastic Summer Challenge is the number one online source for summer reading. Throughout the summer, children 8 and up can log on to www.scholastic.com/summer to read, play educational games and learn how they can help children in need.

A record number of children have already registered; 46,561 so far and 15,997 registered in a single week. As of June 6, 2009 the Summer Challenge website has hosted 984,834 views and 30 million reading minutes have been logged already.

 "Summer reading is a perfect, low-cost activity that helps keep students' learning skills strong," says Francie Alexander, Chief Academic Officer at Scholastic Corporation.

Young readers can join children from across the United States and the world to accumulate reading minutes, earn points for their team, play games and hold virtual book discussions. Participants will learn about critical issues Save the Children addresses for children in the U.S. from early childhood development, to literacy, and physical activity and nutrition, to emergency preparation.

"We are thrilled that this program not only gets kids reading but also educates them about some of the challenges faced by other kids across the country ... Today one in six kids lives in poverty," Mark Shriver, Vice President and Managing Director of Save the Children's U.S. Programs, said. "With the Summer Challenge, Scholastic is taking an important leadership role in uniting the next generation and instilling a greater sense of responsibility to one another."

By providing games, prizes and friendly competition in the name of learning, Scholastic Summer Challenge helps to eliminate the loss of skills that children experience as a result of being out of school during the summer months; otherwise known as the "Summer Slide."

The Scholastic Summer Challenge is parent and teacher friendly. The website provides lists of age-appropriate reading materials and the incentives. At the end of the summer, Scholastic will make a donation to Save the Children's U.S. Programs on behalf participants. The winning team will also vote on which of the core Save the Children efforts will receive an additional contribution.

For more information regarding the Scholastic Summer Challenge please visit www.scholastic.com/summer.

For more information regarding Scholastic please visit www.scholastic.com.