The Book Bandits
Winners of the Battle of the Books were the Book Bandits. Team members included, from left to right, Deyton Burke, Wendy Hurst, Alex Wintz, and Caroline Larson.
The Marauders
The Marauders included, from left to right, Landon Driskell, Landon Scott, and Tristan Burke.
Dumbledore’s Army
Dumbledore’s Army included, from left to right, Tucker Hurst, Graceyn Reeves, Mikayla Windham, and Winston Hogue.
The Reaper Readers
The Reaper Readers included, from left to right, Alex Pickard, Evan Rogers, Riley Koop, and Ava Oswald.
The Dewey Doers
The Dewey Doers included, from left to right, Keely Bredensteiner, Teagan Taylor, Owen Vette, and Josh Schlueter.
The Book Scavengers
The Book Scavengers included, from left to right, Landon Melton-Burrell, Harper Wood, Isabella Kroeger, and Elaina Kroeger.
Rebounding Readers
The Rebounding Readers included, from left to right, Cy Vogler, Kipton Waigand, Locke Chaney, and Ali Ellis.
The Battle Gods
The Battle Gods included, from left to right, Vera Hale, Aliyah Wilke, and Landry Hurst.
Rex’s Readers
Rex’s Readers included, from left to right, Kenni Davis, Archer Meyerkorth, and Briar Daugherty.
The Blue Crew
The Blue Crew included, from left to right, Jack Bailey, Isaac Dougherty, and Noah Davis.
After months of preparation and anticipation, the annual Battle of the Books competition was held on Friday, March 24, 2023, at the Tarkio Resource Center. This is a county-wide event sponsored by Atchison County Development Corporation, Mule Barn Theatre Guild, Flower Mill/Buttercup, and many volunteers.
Ten teams from the three Atchison County schools participated in this year’s competition. The event was based around the twelve books that were nominated for the Mark Twain Readers Award in 2022-23.
Battle of the Books is composed of two rounds of competition. After the first round of 14 questions each, The Book Bandits had the most points of all teams with 26. There was a three-way tie at 24 points between The Marauders, Dumbledore’s Army, and The Reaper Readers. All four of these teams entered the championship round. After the championship round and many tie-breaker questions, The Book Bandits came out on top and were crowned the winners of the 2022-23 Battle of the Books. The traveling pencil will spend the next year in Fairfax, until the battle commences again next spring.
This year, the students who read all 12 nominees included: Harper Wood, Owen Vette, Josh Schlueter, Tucker Hurst, Mikayla Windham, Graceyn Reeves, and Landry Hurst for a combined total of 3,649 pages. The team reading the most pages was Dumbledore’s Army.
Adults attending the com-pe-tition had the opportunity to guess how many total pages had been read in preparation for the event. Guesses ranged from 206 pages to 4,300,210 pages with the actual grand total being 68,408 pages.
Each contestant received a prize bag including a 2023-24 Mark Twain nominee book, a special bookmark and a Buttercup gift card. A special thank you to parents and teachers for encouraging the fourth to sixth graders to read and participate in this fun event.
