With the arrival of spring, Scholastic is once again ramping up for its annual free Summer Reading Challenge campaign. Since 2009, the program has generated more than one billion reading minutes globally in an effort to encourage kids to read more over their summer holidays.

Bestselling author Dav Pilkey (Captain Underpants, Dog Man) has signed on to serve as the global ambassador for this summer’s campaign. He will help launch the Be a Reading Superhero contest, where one school in each American state, territory and the District of Columbia can win a new book for every student ahead of the summer break. Entries are being accepted until April 11.

Moving into May, Scholastic is hitting the road with its Summer Reading Road Trip initiative to bring family reading festivals to 20 major US cities from May 2 to July 31. Two RVs will visit bookstores, schools and libraries, where families can check out the pop-up community reading events, meet authors and illustrators, and participate in other fun reading activities.

Pre-registration is now open for educators to enroll their students from grades kindergarten to eight in the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. After registering their class, teachers can then track their students’ progress during the summer and will get access to free reading resources, such as a reading pledge, letters to parents and summer book lists ranging from preschool to young adult, as well as Spanish and bilingual titles. Staring May 4, kids can log their reading minutes either online or on a smart phone to win prizes and digital rewards when they complete weekly reading challenges.

In 2015, more than 267,000 kids from 6,229 schools in all 50 US states and 28 countries read for a total of 286,611,349 minutes.