Once again, Mrs Neubert, the German teacher, explains the procedure and the rules of the nationwide reading competition. First, the class winners briefly present their favourite book and read an excerpt from it. Then they are given a text from another book. The jury judges the reading technique, the interpretation of the text and the choice of text passages. Afterwards, a draw was held to determine which participant would read first.

From then on, there was a tense silence. Maya first presented "Der Knäckebrotkrach" by Bob Konrad and Daniela Kohl. Then Melina read from the book "Ostwind" by Lea Schmidbauer. In total, this lasted three minutes each.

It was immediately apparent that both had prepared very well for the book presentation, they read the text flawlessly. The participants gave their best in the following foreign text, but there were small differences in the interpretation.

The jury retired for almost five minutes after the performance until they announced the close decision: Maya is the reading queen who can now move on to the regional round and represent the school there in the spring.