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Staff writer

Every day, middle school students pore over textbooks, memorizing facts and figures recorded within, agonizing over the questions that may be posed by teachers who’ve assigned the reading and perhaps dreading the outcome.

Few students relish that sort of reading.

But for many Northdale Middle School (NMS) students, reading is a pleasure, it’s a favorite pastime, an escape, a celebration, a journey into the great beyond and the mysterious unknown.

And for 42 NMS students, reading became a hotly-contested championship competition this year, one punctuated by victory cries and festooned with colorful team banners and playful props.

The battleground? The first-ever NMS Battle of the Books, a contest created by NMS reading intervention specialist Julie Scullen, and aimed at encouraging students to read and celebrating those who harbor a love of the written word.

Back in October, Scullen invited Northdale students to recruit teams of three, then read and devour 25 books, setting to memory key components of each story before the Feb. 26 championship tournament took place.

Books included current Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award nominees and a handful of the classics.

During the championship tournament, teams – the likes of which included the Aces, the Crushing Monkeys, the Wonder Readers, the ViQueens and TNT Ice Cream – faced off against each other in the group lecture hall.

The contest – a sort of middle school readers’ trivia contest – had teams considering questions like “Which book begins with the line, ‘I was 13 the first time I saw a police officer up close?” “In which book was the main character arrested for climbing a skyscraper?” and “In which book did Billy work and save money in order to buy two hunting dogs?”

Teams had just 30 seconds to respond with the correct answer. Incorrect answers sent the team to the spectators sideline, eliminating them from the competition.

In the end, the Wonder Readers – Isabelle Vinson, Angela Birr and Kristy Ornelas-Mozo – took top prize.

Runners-up were the ViQueens: Ashly Oestreich, Noa Landin and McKenna Ackermann.

The Wonder Readers were each awarded two free passes to the Bunker Beach Wave Pool recreation area (donated by Anoka County Parks Department), while members of both teams in the final round received gift cards for Borders Bookstore.

“All that reading really paid off,” said champion reader-team member Vinson.

She and her teammates will undoubtedly do more reading in the days and weeks ahead, she said, listing romance and fantasy, adventure and “anything about animals” as their favorite reading genres.

As for Scullen, she pledges another Battle of the Books in the school’s next chapters.

“We will stage a battle each year from here on out,” she said.

Organizers of the battle are considering staging spring and summer versions of Battle of the Books, according to Scullen.

“We wanted to do more than just encourage reading,” said Scullen.

“We wanted to encourage conversation and discussion about books – and we had a rollicking good time.”

Sue Austreng is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it