Tension mounted all night long as five teams who qualified for the Grand Battle fought it out by answering in-depth questions about the books they were assigned to read. Those finalists in the Battle of the Books competition were the Book Moji, The Book Bandits, Seven Million Books, Book Busters 2.0 and the Reading Rainbows.
A total of 31 teams of five or six students each from fourth through sixth grader had competed for the chance to get to the Grand Battle. All the teams were from Vicksburg with the exception of Schoolcraft’s Book Busters 2.0 who in the end, eked out a win over the second-place team of The Book Bandits from Sunset Lake Elementary. The contest went into “overtime” when these two ended the regular Q&A tied at 93 points each. They battled right to the last of 10 questions in the tie-breaking round with Schoolcraft’s Book Busters 2.0 answering the final question perfectly to achieve 132 points while Book Bandits faltered slightly with a partial answer to finish with 130 total points.
The Battle of the Books gives grade schoolers experience in working as a team, standing up in front of a large crowd to speak and reading extensively. The biggest lesson is how to win and lose gracefully without getting angry, said one of the parents in the audience. The contest is financed with several local sponsorships and is under the auspices of the Schoolcraft Library.