PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Ten teams of Gifted and Talented students from nine Aroostook County middle schools recently went head-to-head in the region’s first Battle of the Books competition.
Teams were quizzed on five different books in five separate rounds and the top three teams that earned the most points advanced to the championship round. Ten questions were asked per book per round.
Leslee Mahon, SAD 1 Gifted and Talented teacher, said she was looking online at different national G-T programs and found Battle of the Books.
“I talked to a couple of teachers about it and to Gail Hagelstein [library/media specialist at Presque Isle Middle School] who had done it before, and we decided to give it a try,” said Mahon. “We did kind of a pilot program a couple years back with my students and talked about the possibility of doing it county-wide and this year we took the reins and ran with it.”
The G-T teachers in Aroostook County all read the same five books and created questions that were submitted to Hagelstein who served as the “battle master” with Anna Tremblay [library/media specialist at Fort Fairfield Middle-High School].
“All 10 schools had the same questions for the local battle, and the one team from each school that scored the highest earned the right to compete in the county competition,” said Mahon. “At PIMS, I had four teams compete in the local battle.”
Teams of five or six middle school students from Ashland, Caribou, Easton, Fort Fairfield, Houlton, Mars Hill, Presque Isle, Van Buren and Washburn competed at the May 12 event which was held at the University of Maine at Presque Isle.
The books that the students read included “Red Pyramid,” “Cyrano DeBergerac,” “Three Cups of Tea,” “The Hunger Games” and “The Brooklyn Nine.”
“We tried to pick some popular books, as well as a classic like ‘Cyrano DeBergerac,’ which is a play and quite challenging,” said Mahon. “We looked at other battles in different states to see what books they chose. With some competitions there are as many as 30 books involved; we did five because this is something supplemental to what they’re doing in their regular classroom. We wanted it to be something they would enjoy and not be daunting for them.”
Alex Allen, an eighth-grader at Easton Junior-Senior High School, said she participated in Battle of the Books because she thought “it would be fun to try new things.”
“This looked like a great opportunity … great books, too,” she said. “I read four of the books and skimmed through the last one. ‘The Hunger Game’ was my favorite. I like the whole futuristic world; it was a great book.”
Allen said when the questions were first asked, she would scan the book in her mind.
“I’d try to think about where it [the answer] is in the book. Sometimes you don’t always figure it out, so it’s good to have people on your team who have read the book,” she said. “I read the first book about three months ago so it was tricky remembering that far back.
“This has been a great experience and it’s fun trying to figure out the answers to the questions. It’s a great way to learn about these books,” said Allen. “These are books that you wouldn’t normally read, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot.”
PIMS eighth-grader Noah Rossignol read all five books the teams were quizzed on.
“At first I wasn’t going to read all five,” he said, “but I figured, ‘Well, I might as well read this one,’ and it just kept going. Plus, by reading all five, I thought it would help out my team. I ended up liking all the books. Normally I don’t like sports books because they’re pretty similar, but ‘The Brooklyn Nine’ was better than I thought it would be.
“Usually I read books for recreation; just for fun. I’ve never been quizzed on books like this before,” said Rossignol. “It’s been fun and I’m glad I participated.”
Mahon said she was pleased with the inaugural event.
“I think it’s great,” she said. “The kids were really excited, and they’re even talking about making battle shirts next year.”
“The students are excited, and their competitiveness is coming out,” said Hagelstein. “Reading encompasses so many things — it’s comprehension, vocabulary, sophisticated sentence structure and the students are getting into different genres. It makes it fun; they get to pit their knowledge against other students. It’s an academic sport that’s fun to do. We’ll definitely do this again next year.”
All competitors received a participation certificate. Members of the first and second runner-up teams received a $5 gift certificate to Mr. Paperback, while each winning team member received a $10 gift certificate.
In the end, three teams battled in the finals — Fort Fairfield, Presque Isle and Easton. Fort Fairfield won the competition, Presque Isle was the first runner-up, while Easton placed third.
The Battle of the Books was sponsored by the Aroostook Directors of Services for Exceptional Children Gifted and Talented Division.
