Rymfire Elementary Students Celebrate School Year's End With Another Battle of the Books

The Battle of the Books is a Rymfire Elementary tradition.

Last week students from every grade organized in teams and competed to show their reading prowess after spending the school year reading at least six titles out of a list of 15, for students in grades 3-5, or 12 books out of 15 for students in grades K-2. Team captains had to read all the books on the lists, though many students end up doing so as well–and more.

Once organized in teams, they jammed the school cafeteria where the competition consisted of hearing quotes from books read out loud by Media Specialist Melanie Tahan, then matching the quotes with the correct book through their iPads. The computerized answers were immediately tabulated, providing team scores and standings in real time.

So just as adults might sometimes challenge each other over a beer (of course you know that “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is from Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities and “So it goes” is Kurt Vonnegut’s most famous line from Slaughterhouse Five–that book more sinister school boards still ban from time to time–but what famous novel opens this way: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”?*) Rymfire’s students challenged each other for prizes and bragging rights.

It’s all part of Florida’s Sunshine State Young Reader Awards Program (and its junior version for younger readers), designed to interest younger readers in reading and motivating older students to read independently and for the sheer pleasure of it. “Sunshine State books are selected for their wide appeal, literary value, varied genres, curriculum connections, and/or multicultural representation,” the program’s website states.

This has been an annual tradition for many years to help students set reading goals and read a variety of books selected each year through Florida Association for Media in Education committees. A group of 20 librarians (or media specialists) from across the state form the two committees that pick the books every year.

At Rymfire, over 100 students qualified for the Battle this year. “More students than ever participated in this reading program than ever before- showing that reading is still alive and thriving at Rymfire Elementary,” Tahan said. Winners got $20 gift certificates and participants all got reading-oriented goodie bags, plus brunch, all sponsored by the Rotary Club of Flagler County.

The grade 3-5 Battle had two teams (including one qualifying second grader). The students who read up to three of the required six books didn’t figure in the competition, but still were able to collect book brag tags. The six books in this year’s Battle were Strangeville School is Totally Normal, by Darcy Miller (“Here about the rat problem” was one of the quotes), Odder, by Katherine Applegate, The Haunted Mustache, by Joe McGee, Bedhead Ted, by Scott SanGiacomo, Good Dogs on a Bad Day, by Rachel Wenitsky (“Don’t like the smell of this one!”), and Secondhand Dogs by Carolyn Crimi.

For the younger readers, the 15 titles included among others Knight Owl, by Christopher Denise, Sir Ladybug, by Corey Tabor and Bug on the Rug, by Sophia Gholz, but alas not And Tango Makes Three, the classic Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell story of the two male penguins of the Central Park Zoo who raised a baby penguin together, well before a few schools around the country thought it was a terrible, terrible thing to do and banned the book, which you can read here. (Next year’s titles for the younger set are viewable here.)

“Reading at Rymfire has always been a priority,” Tahan said. “We do not just reward top reader students but try to do as best as we can to help all readers reach their potential through this program with exposure to reading quality books outside of the curriculum per se, engaging all readers.”

(*) Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.