Quinn Elementary welcomed a special guest on October 28. The state's First Lady Lauren Baker toured classrooms and delivered awards to the school’s top readers.

Quinn Elementary participated in the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, which encourages children around the world to track time spent reading. Statewide, the school took first place and worldwide took 54th place.

“As part of my job, I go around to lots of schools in Massachusetts, and I always talk about you guys,” said Baker to the students. “You’re really setting the standard high for the whole of Massachusetts.”

This is the third year that Quinn Elementary has participated in the honor-based challenge, and the second consecutive win for the school. This year, the school racked up 586,820 minutes reading — a whole 112,000 more than last year — which will place it in the 2017 Scholastic Book of World Records for Massachusetts, said Librarian Kate Powers.

Each student received a unique online login in May to start tracking their progress for the competition, said Powers. “They can see how they’re doing compared to other students across the world.”

Third-grader Elena Sobran earned the top-reader title at Quinn — tallying 23,357 minutes.

“I have a lot of books and I read them,” she said, explaining that her favorite book is her newest, “Crimebiters: It’s a Doggy Dog World,” by Tommy Greenwald. Sobran said it was exciting to meet Baker both last year and this year, but it’s not a novelty experience anymore.

“I know I’ll meet her again next year, and we’ll keep doing it over and over again,” she said, confident in her school.

Powers said it’s not hard to motivate her students, because so many of them love to read. However, sharing her interest in reading makes it a contagious habit, she said.

“I always share with them books that I like,” she said. “I tell them it’s important to me, so it becomes important to them.”

Powers applauded the Scholastic program as a good way to keep kids motivated and interested in reading, but added that it’s also beneficial to schools because it’s free and it connects children from different districts.