WASHOUGAL — Claire Zakovics’ favorite thing about books is how they can transport the reader.
“I like when you can feel the book,” said Claire, 10, a fourth-grader at Gause Elementary School. “You can get into the book and go anywhere.”
Claire said she reads constantly. When time rolled around for Washougal School District’s third annual Battle of the Books reading competition for elementary school students, the district sent out a list of 15 books to read. Students could read as many as they wanted.
Claire read all 15, and on Thursday, was the captain of the Magic 6 Pointers, a team of six elementary school students who won the gold medal at the battle, which took place at Washougal High School.
Two students from each of the district’s three elementary schools — Gause, Cape Horn-Skye, and Hathaway — were placed on teams and asked questions about the books they read. There were six teams competing on Thursday made up of students who performed the best at competitions at their own schools.
At Cape Horn, 131 students read a combined 989 books; at Gause, 55 students read 274 book; and 60 Hathaway students read 126 books.
“The competition part is really about celebrating all they’ve done,” said Washougal Superintendent Mike Stromme.
This year, the competition aspect of the battle changed a bit. Previously, teams from each school would compete, as opposed to teaming up students from different schools.
“It was always so competitive,” said Hillary Marshall, Washougal High School library media specialist. “The feeling in here today was night and day from the other years. We want it to be fun.”
Another new aspect Marshall added in this year was a guest author talk. One of the books on the battle reading list was “Gilded” by Christina Farley, a fantasy novel following a 16-year-old girl from Los Angeles who moves to Seoul, South Korea. Marshall and Farley became friends after they met teaching at a school in Seoul, so Marshall invited Farley to speak with the students.
Farley spoke to the group via Skype about her history as a writer and how a book gets published.
“While the battle is all about reading, it’s important to teach kids about writing and I liked how much our guest author spoke about writing,” Stromme said. “We need to get kids to practice writing like we get them to practice reading.”
Clair was excited to hear Farley speak because “Gilded” was her favorite of the 15 books on the battle list. She said her biggest takeaway from Farley’s talk was to never give up when working toward a goal, whether it’s writing a book or something else.
The theme of this year’s battle was “Reading is Magic,” and the event was held to get students to appreciate reading, Marshall said. Before the final battle, a group of students performed a reworked version of Walk The Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance,” in which the lyrics were rewritten as a pro-reading anthem called “Come On, I Want to Read.”
“Our hope this year was to develop a community of readers and a start a life-long love of reading,” Marshall said.
