Bremen High School District 228 hosted its first-ever Battle of the Books competition at Oak Forest High School on Friday! Each school in D228 sent a team of passionate readers who read a number of books for the competition, battling for the chance to win a district trophy.
Battle of the Books is a quiz competition for all schools in District 228. Each of the schools form one team, and teams will now face off at the district event every Spring. During the competition, each team is presented with a series of questions based on the group of selected books. They have a limited time to respond, and correct answers earn them points. If a team gets the answer incorrect or does not answer in time, the other teams have a chance to steal the question. The team with the highest score at the end is declared the winner.
This year, students read #MurderTrending by Gretchen McNeil, The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson, We are Not Broken by George M. Johnson, and All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. Each of these novels are on the Lincoln Award List.
Hillcrest High School won the first-ever competition, and Tinley Park High School placed second.
Hillcrest Media Specialist Kara Williams coordinated the event for our four high schools. She said a lot of preparations went into bringing this competition to District 228.
“A lot of the preparation was bringing teams together, getting the kids assigned to separate titles of the books, and making sure students are enjoying the process,” Williams said. “The library departments worked together to coordinate vetting the questions, making sure that they were things that we thought were going to be good for our students, figuring out what the format of the books questions were, figuring out what we were going to do for each round, and so on. The kids had a great time and we look forward to continuing this every year!”
Emcee for the competition was Superintendent Dr. Brad Sikora. Our school teams consisted of:
Bremen (Ms. Bernas & Mrs. Sala): Ricardo Abarca, Kaitlyn Carey, Yaritza Guzman, Stephanie Lopez, Evelyn Velazquez, Donald Wilks, Ayden Wright.
Hillcrest (Mrs. Case & Ms. Williams): Emmanuella Edorh, Brendon Grant, Jordin Ortiz, Ashani Moore
Oak Forest (Mrs. Harris & Mrs. O’Rourke): Madeline Acena, Nevaeh Bellinger, Heaven Marshall, Maya Coreas Funes, Melany Coria, Cecelia Cristobal, Mikayla Graziano, Logan Markese, Julia Mueller, ANdrea Bedolla, and Niharika Navni.
Tinley Park (Ms. Gabel & Mrs. Udstuen): Sarah Anderson-Stewart, Natalie Contreras, Estella Godinez, Sydney Jones, Peyton Leonhardt, Elliot Ries, Morgan Scott
Congratulations to our Hillcrest Hawk champions, and all of our students for participating in our district’s inaugural event!