Battle of the Books is a yearly competition in Palm Beach County where elementary, middle, and high school students read books from their respective book lists and then compete to demonstrate comprehension of the books they’ve read.
The books teams read are from the State Young Readers Award program and the Florida Teens Read program, which are both sponsored by the Florida Association for Media in Education.
There are three general phases in the Battle of the Books timeline. The first phase takes place from September to January; in this phase, teams are created (consisting of one to five people) and registered while the contestants start reading their assigned books. Then, the second phase begins in January to March where teams will participate in the ‘Online Battle of the Books’. The online battle has teams answer multiple-choice questions about the books they’ve read. After this, the top two teams are announced for each division (elementary, middle, and high school) to participate in the Grand Battle. The Grand Battle is different from the Online Battle since teams will be required to answer questions with the title of the book and the author(s).
The Grand Battle is always broadcast on The Education Network and teams must show up to The Education Network’s studio on the day of the Grand Battle. Currently, all the past Grand Battles are available on YouTube. The winning team gets to keep the traveling trophy at their school until the next Grand Battle.
West Boca has participated in the district’s Battle of the Books competition for about the past 10 years. A team from West Boca has gone on to the Grand Battle for the past seven years, but West Boca has only won once during the 2018-2019 school year.
This year, the Book Blossoms are heading to the Grand Battle on March 12! The Book Blossoms team includes Emina Brannin, Maria Borrero, Alexandra Kimbrell, Sofia Sierra, and Karla Zalamar. Wish them luck as they try to win the Grand Battle next week!
