Get ready to cheer for your favorite school team at the 2018 Knox County Battle of the Books team championship competition.
Twelve teams of fifth graders representing every public school in Knox County will compete in preliminaries on Tuesday, April 10, 5:00 p.m., at St. Vincent de Paul school and Twin Oak Elementary, Mount Vernon. The final eight teams will move on to the championship competition on Thursday, April 12, 6:00 p.m. at the Mount Vernon Memorial Theater, 112 E. High Street, Mount Vernon.
The preliminary rounds for the competition will be held simultaneously at two locations in Mount Vernon. On Tuesday, April 10, 5:00 p.m., six teams: Centerburg, Columbia, St. Vincent de Paul, East, East Knox, Pleasant Street will compete at St. Vincent de Paul School, 206 E. Chestnut Street. The remaining six teams: Dan Emmett Team 1 & Team 2, Danville, Fredericktown, Twin Oak and Wiggin Street, will compete at Twin Oak Elementary, 8888 Martinsburg Road.
Both events are free and open to the public. Third and fourth graders interested in participating in future Battle of the Books programs and their families are encouraged to attend.
Battle of the books (BOB) has been a competitive game for over 100 years. It was a weekly feature on a Chicago public schools’ radio station. The game was created to encourage and give students the opportunity to develop their potential through the discovery of reading.
Through this game, students not only verify their love and discovery for reading, but it also allows them to develop friendships between students based upon socialization, competition, and mutual respect. game in which teams try to identify titles and authors of books from questions based upon plots, settings, and characters.
Knox County has again offered the opportunity to engage its students in the spirit of Battle of the Books thanks to program sponsors Central Ohio Technical College, the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County and the Friends of the Library and community contributors.
All schools and homeschool groups within the Knox County area are invited to create teams of fifth graders that are interested in using their love of reading in a respectful competition. Teams are made up of up to nine players, six of which compete in each round. For more than six months, students read over 80 books to prepare for the competition.
For the competition, each team will be asked an equal number of questions. Questions are addressed to teams alternately. Eight questions will be asked per game during the round robin portion of the competition. The team that is being asked the question has ten seconds to give both the correct title and author of the book. If, at the end of the ten seconds, a team is unable to answer a question correctly, the opposing team is allowed the opportunity to give the title and author immediately to receive the points. If a team gives a title and not an author or gives the incorrect author, the opposing team is allowed to give it and receive those points.
The team that scores the highest amount of points in the competition will be named the 2018 Knox County Battle of the Books Champion and will have their team added to champions commemorative plaque.
For more information, call the main library at 740-392-2665 Ext 243, visit www.knox.net or email communityrelations@knox.net.