Battle of the books
More than 80 Lake Orion fifth graders competed in Orion Township Public Library’s Battle of the Books program this year.
The traditional in-person battle competition, which has been running since 1986, was forced to be revamped to a virtual environment this year due to COVID-19 restrictions. The new program included a combination of Zoom meetups, team video challenges and an online live quiz. The program kicked off in mid-November and concluded this month.
“The youth librarians worked tirelessly to figure out exactly how we could hold the Battle this year in a virtual environment,” said Ashley Lehman, youth services head. “We knew we had to make some big changes to make it just as fun as in person.”
The final top teams were:
• First Place: “Golden Pages” – Benjamin Schoenhals, Christopher Gonzalez, Shiva Arunchunaikani, Suhaas Maddipatla
• Second Place: “Girls Just Wanna Read” – Emma Hopkins, Sneh Makhecha, Wynter Lemmon
• Third Place: “Book Divers” – Anderson Buckland, Brady Borka, Brandon Houston, Daniel Ebbert
• Most Creative Costume: “Book Bandits” – Allison Lockwood, Aubrielle Ripari
• Most Creative Team Name: “Rosie the Readers” – Betsy Hetu, Greta Colquitt, Trinity Hays, Verity Taylor
• Most Team Spirit: “Awkward Turtles” – Alexis Frost, Daphne Williams, Marissa Hedrick
All teams celebrated the four months of reading at a victory party with awardwinning authors Liz Braswell (“Stuffed”), Debbie Levy (“Becoming RBG”) and Janet Tashjian (“My Life as a Book”).
The Orion Township Public Library is located at 825 Joslyn Road, Orion Township. For more information, visit www.orionlibrary.org or call 248-693-3000.