name that book

The school district here does a competition every year for the 3rd-5th graders called Name That Book. A list of 100 books is released at the end of the previous school year. Children are encouraged to use this list for their summer reading. When they are back at school, the kids form teams of up to 6 members. Then in the middle of January, a series of competitions begin. 10 - 12 teams meet for battle in the library (of course). Team one is read a quote. Team one then has 30 seconds to name the title of the book. The title has to be exactly correct. (Some of the titles are ridiculously long) If they answer in time and correctly, they earn one point. If not, no point is awarded, and they move on to team two. Etc. Each grade level has two heats. Then there is a school wide competition among the heat winners from each grade level. The singular school champion team goes on to represent the elementary school at the district level.

Grace was nuts for this competition.

I mean, she went completely bonkers for it.

She single handedly read at least half of the list in the first few months of school. ( I hadn't procured any of the list books for her over the summer because we had just moved in before the end of the school year and I had no idea what any of this stuff was about...) Her team met together in the library during their lunch recess. They practiced quotes and practiced reciting titles. Grace worried and worked and worried and worked. It was the only thing she could talk about. For months. MONTHS.

The night before their first competition Grace asked Cori to give her a father's blessing which helped calm her down a little. Then, at last, it was finally time to compete. Her team did well out of the gate. They were 3 or 4 questions in before missing their first point. Once time started running out, they took a tally of where all 12 teams were. Grace's team was tied with one other team, and so they went into a shoot out. It was nerve wracking!

Team Grace: correct
Other team: correct
Team Grace: incorrect (oh no!)
Other team: incorrect (Ahhh! There's still a chance!)
Team Grace: correct (then they all sat in their little circle with heads lowered, crossing fingers and holding hands...)
Other team: incorrect (Victory!)

Stewart, Michael, Christopher, Grace, Clara, Taylor

I was standing in the back of the library violently rocking Jeffery in his stroller I was so anxious for her. The librarian brought them up front and introduced them to everyone and oh my, was our girl beaming for weeks. We were so glad her team won, though it meant that we still had another competition looming in the future.

The school-wide competition was about a month later. Grace's team did well again, but they came in second to a team of 5th grade girls who had been working hard to get to the district competition since they first became a team as 3rd graders. Grace's team was 8/10 on their quotes. The winning team was a quick and effortless 10/10. Grace and her team mates were very sad to have lost, but they were glad such an awesome team went on to represent Swenke at the district competition. The librarian gave them each a big hug and told them that she had never seen a 3rd grade team do so well.

We have two copies of next year's list...