Though many children choose television and video games over reading, there’s at least one child who still loves the written word – a lot.

Rising fifth-grader Katie Martin, 10, racked up 1,179.6 Accelerated Reader points for the 2007-08 school year – the highest among the Vicksburg Warren School District’s nine elementary schools. In the past, a high AR score for the approximately 9,000-student district has been around 600 points.

To celebrate her achievement, Katie, the daughter of Andy and Karen Martin, received on the last day of school a surprise police-escorted limousine ride. Bowmar students lined up to greet their star reader, and librarian Dana Tankersley presented Katie with a bouquet of roses.

Katie Martin gets a congratulatory hug from her 6-year-old brother, Tommy. (Joshua Corban * The Vicksburg Post)”It’s fun,” Katie said of reading. “It takes you to places you can’t visit without reading.”

AR is a program that “promotes independent reading with an emphasis on student choice,” said Tankersley. Students choose books, read them and take comprehension tests to gain points. Most books are worth about six points, though bigger books, such as the “Harry Potter” series, are worth more.

Students are rewarded for points in various ways, such as accruing “money” in the school’s AR store.

Students are tested at the beginning of the year to determine their reading comfort level. The program is designed to give students “practice in their comfort zone so that they succeed and hopefully move up,” Tankersley said.

Katie took 199 comprehension tests this year. Her reading teacher, Dotti Rankin, said Katie was “always reading.”

“She would come in with a stack of three books she had read the night before and take a test every morning,” Rankin said.

Katie’s mother said her daughter reads quickly and all the time, even in the car on the way to swim practice.

“I like most books that I read,” Katie said, adding that she doesn’t really have a favorite.

She does watch television occasionally, but it depends on what’s on and how good her book is.

‘Go to the library and pick a book that you find interesting and soon you’ll get wrapped up in it. Keep going and going and then you’ll start reading a lot more. It’s fun to read a good book.’KATIE MARTINACCELERATED READER CHAMPIt was Katie’s idea to set her AR goal at 1,000 points. Her next project is to make sure that her younger brothers, Charlie, 9, and Tommy, 6, don’t leave her record in the dust.

“I want to try and make sure that my brothers get close to my record, but don’t break it,” she said.

Katie’s plans for her fifth-grade year include, well, more reading. “I want to make 500 points with the books I have left (to read).”

As for those who aren’t fond of reading, Katie says, “Go to the library and pick a book that you find interesting and soon you’ll get wrapped up in it. Keep going and going and then you’ll start reading a lot more. It’s fun to read a good book.”