An Epic Battle

This year's District-wide Battle of The Books validated one school's ambitious reading program that involved students, teachers and parents.

Spring 2010

Video by Gary Olsen

Take a school full of avid readers, give them a list of 20+books to read, and tell them they will be competing for their school in a spring-time contest against rival schools. The contest would be comprised of questions about characters, plot points, settings, and all pertinent details about those books, and you would rally your team to certain victory if you knew your books. For some students it's a challenge impossible to resist.

Gary Olsen, host of the ever popular cable show, Crazy Cam, filmed the district-wide event held at Kennedy School. It was a nail biter down to four finalists who had to compete in a sudden death round to see which team would emerge the champion. The Crazy Cam was able to capture the competition by being right in among the contestants as they deliberated on their answers, and, in some cases, argued as to which answer was the correct one.

Since most teams consisted of a half dozen + alternates, each student may have read several but not all of the books on the annual reading list. It was more than 20 books, so the challenge was to assemble a team that had a command of as many books on the list as possible.

The questions dealt with facts and characters in the book, and many of the questions were very difficult for some teams. But there were four teams that made it to round 3 sudden death. Lincoln, Irving, Hoover and Eisenhower.

But it was Lincoln that emerged victorious with a perfect score by answering every question correctly in all three rounds. According to Lincoln's teachers, the victory was validation that their reading program, a significant initiative that involved teachers and parents, paid off.