How it works Librarians from Fraser Valley Regional Library work with school librarians to excite grade 4 & 5 students about the Reading Link Challenge.
Interested students form teams of six or seven players. Each team is responsible for knowing the contents of six books. Every player is responsible for reading at least one book. Kids get the books in November and read until February. All teams then participate in one or more levels of Challenge:
Reading Link Challenge Student Newsletter (pdf)
Reading Link Challenge Mission
Goals
1. To ensure the participation of children with lower reading scores throughout the region.
2. To foster teamwork and cooperative thinking.
3. To build strong relationships between public libraries and local schools.
4. To share quality children's literature with participants that represents a diversity of experiences at a variety of reading levels.
History
In the later 1930s, the Battle of the Books was a weekly radio show that used a quiz bowl format to test children's knowledge of good literature. Questions about characters, plots and settings were answered by teams representing different elementary schools.
The Battle of the Books program moved to a library setting in 1993 at Kalamazoo Public Library (Michigan). It was used to encourage Grade 4 and 5 students to have fun with reading. In 1996, a similar project was undertaken at Seattle Public Library. In 2002, Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam Public Libraries joined the challenge, and in 2004 the entire Fraser Valley Regional Library came on board. As of 2012, 13 library systems from across BC have joined the Challenge, spanning from Whistler to the Kootenays!
Reading Link Challenge titles for 2012 - 2013 are as follows: