Are you ready for the Battle of the Books
Addicted to reading? Do your nightmares include restrictions of only 1 book per week? Do you spend hours reading books for no reason? Join this year's Battle of the Books team at your school. Across the highway from the Bealeton Library, Cedar Lee Middle School students are preparing for the March 30th competition. Only 20 books to read! All books are available at the Fauquier County Public Libraries (ask for a list) and at your middle school. Come to the Bealeton Library Teen Book Club meetings on the first Monday of February and March to talk and quiz each other on this year’s selection. There will also be a Battle of the Books Mock Competition at the end of February (held elsewhere) to ensure you are prepared. At the final Battle, each member of the top 3 winning teams will get to pick a free DVD. The grand prize is a shiny trophy and good memories to commemorate your achievement.
Below, Cedar Lee Middle School students have highlighted some favorite quotes from the books and add their own thoughts:
The Arkadians by Lloyd Alexander
"Lucian is on the run from a pair of murderous soothsayers." The Arkadians is a mythical, mysterious book filled with mythical creatures, magic, and kings that will keep you guessing to the very end.
"On a stormy night in the Kingdom of Pergamontio, an insistent knocking brings Fabrizio, the servant boy, to the door." Midnight Magic is a medieval mystery.
Moose's first impressions of his new home on Alcatraz. "Today I moved to a twelve-acre rock covered with cement, topped with bird turd and surrounded by water."
The warden's daughter returns her friends' shirts and they wail. "'No blood spatters. No bullet holes. Nothing?' another kid asks. 'I didn't pay a nickel to have my shirt washed,' says another girl who had made Piper promise her blouse wouldn't come back with one single drop of blood on it."
"As Murdock was pushed out the door, Thomas straightened himself up. ‘God help me, Annie. My orders are to arrest you, for spying, shooting at our pickets, and harboring Mosby rangers. I can’t not do it. If I don’t, they’ll simply send someone else...’"
"Just fourteen, Rick Walker is alone, on the run, and desperate." The Maze is a heart-stopping story, a story of friendship, personal growth, and one boy’s dream to fly.
The Outcasts of 19 Shuyler Place by E.L. Konigsburg
Uncle Alex –"Time is not money. Time wasted is often time spent. Money wasted is merely redistributed."
Mrs. Kaplan – "We have procedures Mr. Rose."
Uncle Alex – "Start the procedures."
Mrs. Kaplan – "There are forms to be signed."
Uncle Alex –"Bring them to me. I will sign them."
...will keep you guessing to the very end. "Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, the U.S.S. Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine." Left for Dead is a thrilling story about a handful of men that survived the horrid bombing of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. After having to listen to the screaming of their dismembered shipmates, the survivors had to deal with hunger, thirst, and swarms upon swarms of sharks.
"I always thought the biggest problem in my life was my name, Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw, but little did I know that it was the least of my troubles, or that someday I would live up to it."
Read this famous Bavarian author’s (poet, translator, editor...) new name for prime numbers. They are personified as prima donnas. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002, pronounciation and definition of prima donna: (pree-muh, prim-uh DON-uh) A vain and overly sensitive person who is temperamental and difficult to work with: "That Jenkins girl is a good gymnast, but she certainly is a prima donna." In opera, prima donna is the principal female soloist. From Italian, meaning "first lady." Did this author write the book to confuse and make people hate math? One reader said she would "read a whole page and think, ‘wait, what just happened?’" Try this book and decipher this unusual topic and writing style.
"It grabs Wolfe by the leg and flings him back and forth." Cryptid Hunters is an adventurous book with nonstop action. It’s filled with death-defying stunts, humans hunting humans, and a mysterious creature that can’t seem to be caught.
Welcome to the Ark by Stephanie Toland
Do you believe in telepathy or is it all just "parapsychological mumbo jumbo"? At Laurel Mountain Center for Research and Rehabilitation, a medling, power-hungry adult, Harlan Turnbull, wrote this report to his superior. It said, "Miranda Ellenby is my patient, and I do not believe that a group home placement with its intense interaction is appropriate for a fragile and fragmented personality such as hers. Furthermore, one of the other 'family' members is a violent and unstable teenage boy. The implications are obvious." Young Elijah, Taryn, and older Miranda and Doug share one dream that may be dreamed by unacknowledged kids all over the world. One night, "The sound of her running feet against the floor does not shut out the sounds behind her, the rhythmic thumps, the thunderous growl..." Find out what and where is the Ark.
