Editor's note: Twenty elementary schools hold some form of reading motivation and competition program for 4th and/or 5th grade students. Some schools do it only internally, some internally and against other MMSD schools. In addition to the seven mentioned in the article below, here are the other schools which hold a program: Allis, Crestwood, Emerson, Gompers, Hawthorne, Lake View, Lindbergh, Lowell, Marquette, Mendota, Nuestro Mundo, Sandburg and Schenk.

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Battle of the Books is a reading motivation program that has been around for some time, but it began at Falk and Shorewood Elementary schools as a component of a Classroom Action Research class in 1997-1998. That year there was a group especially for librarians led by facilitators Nancy Beck and Patty Schultz.

The opportunity to meet with fellow librarians and pursue research that would benefit my students was irresistible. My colleague Helen Read, retired Shorewood ES librarian, and I were both interested in connecting students to the world of quality literature. We decided to collaborate.

The Battle of the Books was one of the results. It is a trivia contest consisting of questions about books on a reading list. Students have six weeks in which to read the books before they meet in teams for the school contest.

We began this voluntary reading motivation program with just the fourth grade, but expanded the following year to include both fourth and fifth grades. Just for fun, the top three teams of each school met for a playoff.

In subsequent years, there were Talented & Gifted (TAG) teachers and librarians from other elementary schools who were interested in joining the playoff. (The middle school librarians have been conducting a Battle of the Books for a number of years.)

We changed the name of the contest to the Book Bowl, and the name of the playoff to the Super Book Bowl. Currently the top two teams from each school proceed to the Super Book Bowl.

We have updated the list of books several times. This past summer, seven librarians met several times and read a host of new books. We updated both the fourth and fifth grade book list to include books that were more multicultural. That task included writing questions for the contest and assembling everything into a master database that we share.

Most recently, the West side schools who join together to play in the Super Book Bowl include Chavez, Falk, Leopold, Lincoln, Randall, Shorewood, and Thoreau.

From the beginning, students have been enthusiastic. Book Bowl introduces them to quality literature and authors that they might not otherwise read. For many students, the motivation of the Book Bowl helps propel them over the hurdle of reading longer chapter books and brings a genuine sense of accomplishment.

The day after our Super Book Bowl, a student came in and asked if he could still read some of the Book Bowl books. Of course, I said yes!