Get ready, get set, BATTLE

At the beginning of this school year, I was devastated that one of our favorite clubs was not going to be sponsored by our librarians anymore. For the past two years, I have volunteered as Judge for our school's Battle of the Books team. If you do not have Battle of the Books at your school, it is an amazing competition team that we are apart of that encourages children to read outside of their assigned reading. Furthermore, it requires students to know the typically 4 assigned books THE BEST compared to the other competitors. I have loved almost every book selected for the battle, i.e. Lincoln's Grave Robbers, Legend, The False Prince, Trash, Out of My Mind, Ghost of Graylock, Because of Mr. Terupt, Eleventh Plague, and Wonder.  This year our battle books were Cinder, Counting by 7's, Mr. Lemoncello's Library, and Mark of the Thief. I decided to take on this club all by my lonesome this year and the pay off was big! Today was our semi-final competition for Battle of the Books! We competed against one of the other local middle schools. My 13 students were very intimidated by the 50+ odd number of competitors for the other school.

The competition consists of 4 rounds of 6 questions each. It amazes me every year how much these students remember about the books! Minute details that I would forget 30 seconds after reading them, these students recall at a drop of a hat, under the stage lights, in front of an auditorium full of their peers, parents, and teachers. After the first two rounds, we were still tied. NAIL BITTING! Finally, our battlers started pulling away in the third round! First by only two questions awarded full credit to our team, and half credit awarded to the other team. It was so incredibility nerve-racking!

 And then, the final question we were awarded full credit and pulled out a 270 to 190 point win! 

I am so proud of this fierce-some 13! We compete at the finals on March 17th! I can't wait!