Battle of the Books 2022
After a virtual Battle of the Books in 2021, Overlake and Open Window were delighted to able to run our 2022 Battle of the Books in person! This year the venue was Overlake, so our teams were joined in The Hollow (the tent below the Campus Center) by 13 strong competitors from Open Window, accompanied by their librarian, Lauren Richey. Overlake library assistant Andrea McCandlish took a break from her maternity leave to act us as our timekeeper, and Ms. Richey kept the score.
The following day, we staged our Overlake 5th grade Battle in Mr. Roberson’s room, with Mr. Roberson and library assistant sub Jen Haas doing time/scorekeeping.
The Battle of the Books is a combination reading contest and game show, in which teams of students compete to answer questions from a set list of books. Half of the books are chosen by students, the other half by the librarians. For 6th-8th graders at Overlake, the Battle is voluntary, and 22 Overlake students signed up this year. The 5th grade Battle is required. Students were challenged with questions like: "In which book did a character once accidentally tell the Tanzanian president’s wife that she smelled like a diseased wildebeest?" (‘Spy School’ by Stuart Gibbs).
In the 6th-8th grade Battle, after several regular rounds and two semi-final rounds, it came down to Open Window Team One against Overlake Team Four (Yeriel, 8th, Shaina, 8th, Aidan, 6th, Zachary, 6th, Nidhir, 7th, Daniel, 6th) for the final. It was a hotly contested round, especially as there had been a mix-up with the book lists (my fault--I can only blame CoVid brain!), and in the end, it was a tie, and all winners will receive Amazon gift cards. Many congratulations to the winners! We look forward to another challenging Battle next year at Open Window.
In the 5th grade Battle, after many nail-biting rounds, the final round came down to Team Six vs. Team Two, and Team Two (Alyssa, Taehee, Matthew, Viraj, Dara, Sameen) emerged victorious! Many congratulations to them and their reading expertise.