How do you get kids to read more books? Make it a competition.
Kent School District elementary schools did just that at the seventh-annual district Battle of the Books June 6, bringing teams from all 28 grade schools together to test their knowledge of a long list of children’s tomes.
“It’s a love of reading; it’s competing as a team, getting your strategy ready for the competition,” said Mimi Vosper, librarian and organizer of the event. “It’s just reading all kinds of books out there, and there’s new books every year. It’s a really neat event.”
The Battle of the Books is a reading-incentive program that encourages students to carefully read quality books that have been nominated for the Young Reader’s Choice or Sasquatch Award book lists.
Student teams of four read books from the predetermined list throughout the year and then collaborate to remember important plot elements as librarians challenge them with questions at each level of the competition. Multiple teams within each school compete for the right to represent their school in the district finals, which took place June 6 at Glenridge Elementary School this year.
Lake Youngs Elementary School was the defending champion at this year’s final competition, but two new teams ended up topping last year’s winner. Sunrise Elementary School and Ridgewood Elementary School were tied after the battle’s regular 40 questions covering the 19 books on this year’s list. They went into a sudden-death round to determine the winner.
“It was really exciting,” Vosper said. “We’ve never gone into sudden death at the finals level, so that was quite exciting.”
The Ridgewood team, called the “Jill Readers,” won. The team was made up of Isabelle Ayers, Lesley Newcome, Linda Jensen and a girl named Jessica, who asked to have her last name withheld. The “Jill Readers” and their sudden-death opponents from Sunrise were invited to the Kent School Board meeting June 11 to be recognized by the school board for their hard work.
Vosper said the event was fun and beneficial for all of the 3,300 fourth- through sixth-grade students who participated this year, and librarians from across the district also got to be involved.
“Each librarian submits 15 questions from a specific book, and we choose the final questions from those,” Vosper said. “This is really fun for the whole district.”
The librarian, who organizes the event with fellow librarian Charisse Tsukamoto, said she’s glad to see the event continue to draw teams from every district elementary school.
“We started out with only three schools participating in 2002, and now all 28 have been involved three years in a row,” Vosper said. “The kids are really enthusiastic, and we’re up to 3,300 students participating, so that’s pretty good, I think.”
For more information about the Kent School District Battle of the Books, visit www.kent.k12.wa.us/library/botb/botb.htm.
Contact Daniel Mooney at 253-437-6012 or dmooney@reporternewspapers.com.
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