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Boyd Middle School has just finished its own Battle of the Books since we came back to school in January after our holiday break. I started out with 16 arbitrary titles chosen by me—books that have been very popular in our library. Some you would probably expect—Twilight, The Lightning Thief, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid—but others, such as The House of the Scorpion, The Giver, and Walk Two Moons have been read by a number of students in English classes. Others, like Hatchet and Holes, are perennial favorites. Actually, to encourage participation I intentionally included books that have been made into movies. If the book was part of a series, the contestant was the first book in the series. I vaguely remember from my Pep Club days in high school that brackets work in multiples of 4, so I Googled a 16-team bracket (and how to seed it) and drew it out on the big portable white board in the library. To build excitement, I filled out the bracket as we went along, two contestants at a time. We had one contest per week, so the first round took 8 weeks. I wanted the students to have read the books, but I didn’t make them prove it. Students, however, did have to put their names on the ballots, so I could be sure no-one “stuffed” the ballot box, and so I could discard the votes made by Brad Pitt and Celine Dion. I’m sure this is nothing new (although it’s something we’ve never tried before) but what I thought might be interesting to you are some of the results. The House of the Scorpion, which was read in class by 2/3 of our 8th graders last year, beat Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Then in the next round Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone beat The House of the Scorpion by 2 votes. The biggest surprise was in Round 2, when Runaway by Wendelin van Draanen, last year’s state children’s choice book award winner, beat Twilight. Apparently there was a Twilight backlash vote which I’m guessing can be attributed to some boys and others who don’t like to follow the crowd. In my naďveté, I had seeded Twilight as number 1, so that threw the whole top of my bracket into disarray. The semi- final round, between The Lightning Thief and The Outsiders was a dead tie, so the final round was a vote among the three books that were left, The Outsiders, The Lightning Thief, and Runaway. The Lightning Thief won. My conclusions: 1. Old favorites are old favorites for a reason. The Outsiders was written over 40 years ago, but it still speaks to young people. 2. You can never under-estimate what is considered “cool” by middle school students. 3. Books that might never be picked up in the school library can become favorites because of being read in the classroom. Becky Hatchett, Librarian Clyde Boyd Middle School Sand Springs, OK becky.hatchett@sandites.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. To change your LM_NET status, you send a message to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL 3) SET LM_NET MAIL 4) SET LM_NET DIGEST * To contact an LM_NET Moderator: LM_NET-request@listserv.syr.edu * LM_NET Help & Information: http://lmnet.wordpress.com/ * LM_NET Archive: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/archive/ * EL-Announce with LM_NET Select: http://lm-net.info/join.html * LM_NET Supporters: http://lmnet.wordpress.com/category/links/el-announce/ * LM_NET Wiki: http://lmnet.wikispaces.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------