Battle of the Books (and a Break from Boring Textbooks)

Books may be “nerdy” but the Battle of the Books teams looked like they had more fun than you on Wednesday when they got to miss a day of school for the competition. On March 7, the high school and middle school Battle of the Books teams traveled to Nansha College Preparatory Academy (NCPA) to compete against a handful of other schools.

Battle of the Books is an annual competition where students from different schools gather up to answer questions based on eight different books. Before the competition, teams have to make sure that at least one person on their team have read each book because there are questions about every single book. The competition is easier than it sounds initially; all the questions are in the format of “in which book does…”, so all the answers are the book titles and the authors. Basically, instead of asking questions such as, “What color were the protagonist’s shoes when she walked home,” Battle of the Books has questions like, “In which book does the protagonist walk home from school with red shoes?”

Here are the books chosen for this years’ competition:

This year, Mrs. Navis, supervisor of AISG’s teams, invited one middle school team to join the two high school teams. They managed to do even better than the high school teams, which was slightly embarrassing.

Overall, the competition went smoothly. The participants left in the morning and got back to school just in time for students to attend the NHS Induction Ceremony. Lunch was served by the host school. This was freshman Sandy N’s third Battle of the Books competition, and she says that this year’s books “were much better than any other years’.” In addition to getting our teams in first and second place, Ms. Navis was also extremely excited to have more boys involved in this year’s high school teams than previous years.

Personally, I really enjoyed my third Battle of the Books (my second one with AISG), though I wish I had more time to dedicate reading in general—I think it’s an enjoyable getaway from my school work. “The books aren’t heavy-duty: they’re fun, they’re engaging, and we try to choose books to help people just get a break from all the academics,” says Mrs. Navis about chosen books for this years’ competition. She also points out that participating in Battle of the Books can count for one’s CAS hours as well. Although I understand that upperclassmen are much more busy academically, I think anyone who likes reading should pick up some Battle books and see if they might be interested.