BOOK BOWL
Book Bowl is a contest in which teams from the New Haven Public Schools read 10 books, absorb as much as they can from those books, and answer questions about those books. There are two separate competitions: Grades 6/7/8 and 4/5 that happen at different times of the year.
There are three rounds for each competition:
1) School-wide Book Bowl Competition: Teams from grades 6/7/8 and 4/5 compete to represent Nathan Hale at the next round.
2) City-wide Competition: One team from each school goes before a questioner and answers 20 questions, plus 5 tie-breaker questions. The four winning schools move on to the Final Four.
3) Final Four: The four winning schools compete for a trophy, which goes to the winning school for the year.
What kind of questions are asked?
Every question begins, “In which book…” For example:
“In which book does a character call a mouth a ‘pie hole’? Brainboy and Deathmaster by Tor Seidler
The spokesperson from the team must answer with the correct title of the book and the author.
What is the Book Bowl Festival?
At the City-wide competition, the Book Bowl Festival happens at the same time as the questioning. Teams that are finished being questioned are allowed to go from station to station to play games relating to the books that they’ve read.
Why have this competition?
Book Bowl competitions give us an opportunity to expose our students to ten of the best books by ten of the best children and young adult authors of our time. Every year a panel of librarians works tediously to present books with a variety of reading levels, genre and subject matter, so that students will want to read these books. It is also a good way for teachers to learn about these authors.
Hundreds of books are read during these competitions.
What can be better than that?
Click below for a link to the list of 2008 Book Bowl Books