Tales from a Loud Librarian

Motto for Mock BOB: May the Best Book Win! It did:  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell We started the Mock BOB at PFTSTA on March 10th. It took a month to get through 15 battles in four rounds. In Round 1 , there were eight battles that were fought live during lunch in the commons area. Students stood up to speak as a champion for their book. For Round 2 and 3, the students picked their selections online. In Round 2 , the champions wrote a brief pitch for their book, but in Round 3 , the champions created a brief video. The events brought some excitement to the library and with multiple copies of the original sixteen books, students eager to read the books that their friends were defending could check them out and read throughout the month of battles. Championing Far Far Away Going to Bat for The Thing about Luck Middle School Students Listen Attentively More Words for Far Far Away Since this was the end of a long process, we decided tha...

Today, I sent the students a link to the Survey Monkey with the pictures that you see below to help them in their quest for the best of the books in Round 2. The students who defended the books in Round 1 gave me the blurbs to add to the pictures below. Just click on each picture to enlarge it to read what the students had to say. I think the students did a phenomenal job. They gave just the right kind of info to try and sway their classmates to select their book as a winner. The poll will stay open until Monday the 24th. I will let you know the school's selections next week. I will also add the a link to the SLJ author judge decisions after they are posted next week.  For Battle 1 of Round 2, our selections at PFTSTA did not match the selections of SLJ's author judges. Tonya Bolden was given the task by SLJ for picking the best of two non-fiction works: The Animal Book and Boxers and Saints . Though our student presenters of those books loved the...

On Tuesday, the students met in the commons area during lunch to participate in two more battles in our Mock BOB. The first book up was Doll Bones by Holly Black. I was concerned about this particular title because one student had started the book, but returned it with an explanation that she did not care for it so she could not finish it. Did the mean that Julian felt the same and would not be able to champion it? However, he wowed me when he arrived with his speech printed out and ready to go. He stepped up to the microphone and belted out his reasons for why his classmates should select his book as the best. One of the students who was to defend Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell pulled out, so I stepped up. The students have to present twice at high school lunch and middle school lunch, so that meant that I had to do the same. I was able to speak eloquently the first time around, but I sort of botched it the second time. Oh well, it isn't about me...