Franklin Congratulates New Zealand National Spelling Bee Winner

Sydney, Australia. March 24, 2010 Franklin Electronic Publishers congratulates the winner of this year's New Zealand Vegemite Spelling Bee.

Tom Winter, a 13 year old student from Burnside High School in Christchurch, won with the word 'dissonant'. The national final ran for 17 rounds, with the final rounds head-to head between Christopher and Celine Kao from Sacred Heart College in Hamilton, who tripped over the word 'circuitous'. Liam Davis from Auckland's Liston College, was third.

Tom now goes on to represent New Zealand at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC.

"I'd like to congratulate all participants in this year's New Zealand National Spelling Bee and in particular, wish Tom a fun and rewarding experience in Washington," commented Russell Goldberg, Managing Director of Franklin Electronic Publishers (Aust.) P/L.

Open to all New Zealand year 9 students, the New Zealand National Spelling Bee is designed to help children improve their spelling, increase vocabularies, develop correct English usage and learn concepts that will help them right through their lives.

Franklin's sponsorship is being provided as part of an overall commitment to improving literacy outcomes for all young people. It complements Franklin's support in Australia for National Literacy & Numeracy Week (NLNW), MS Readathon, The Premier's Spelling Bee, Spellmasters and Franklin Scholarships.

NLNW is a collaborative initiative of the Australian Government conducted jointly with State and Territory Governments.

The Premier's Spelling Bee is proudly presented by the NSW Department of Education and Training and the Premier's Department.

For more information on the New Zealand National Spelling Bee, check out www.spellingbee.co.nz

About Franklin

Franklin Electronic Publishers Incorporated is a world leader in electronic handheld information, having sold approximately 42,000,000 electronic books.  Current titles available directly or through partners number more than 116,000 in sixteen languages under license from world class publishers, such as Merriam-Webster, Oxford University Press, Larousse, Langenscheidt, PONS and HarperCollins, focused in four areas: Language Expansion, Language Learning, Reading Enhancement and Writing Enhancement.  The Company also licenses its underlying technology to an array of partners including Adobe and Sun Microsystems. Franklin’s products are available at 49,000 retail outlets worldwide, through catalogues and online at http://www.franklin.com/au.