Battle of the Books
Students face quiz-style questioning at Battle of the Books, a competition strained by library cutbacks
Students face quiz-style questioning in competition strained by library cutbacks.
Six elementary school students huddled together on a classroom floor at the Santa Fe Community College, whispering urgently. Their eyes darted over to their opponents, another team of equally conspiratorial youngsters. Parents watched anxiously from the sidelines — desks that circled the center of the room. They snapped photos on their smartphones.
At issue was this: “In which book does a river flow with raspberry juice?”
Team 14 deliberated in hushed tones, then — “Oh! Oh!”
The answer: Brown Girl Dreaming, written by Jacqueline Woodson, the team leader proclaimed.
For hours Saturday, more than 400 students in grades 4-8 from across New Mexico participated in rounds of questions like this for the annual Battle of the Books, a competition that requires students to read at least 10 of 20 books on a reading list for their grade level. The students are then mixed up and divided at random into teams of members from different cities and schools that face quiz-style questioning.
The competition has been held in the state since the mid-1990s and is part of a nationwide initiative to encourage a love of reading. But
many parents and educators at the event said reading is an activity that is largely overlooked and underfunded in their schools. And money needed to make the Battle of the Books happen — for books, transportation and lodging — is coming directly out of parents’ own pockets, they said.
One librarian said she used fees collected from late library books to fund this year’s trip to the battle for students at her school.
Many said the lack of funding for the Battle of the Books speaks to larger financial strains in school systems throughout the state and nation.
In recent years, school libraries around the country have cut funding for new library books and have cut back on librarians — instead, staffing libraries with volunteers or educational assistants. Two librarians from the Santa Fe Public Schools expressed concerns about similar cutbacks during a school board meeting last week. They told the board they were working with worn and outdated books, and urged more support for school libraries.
The cutbacks for books don’t bode well for a state with some of the lowest student reading scores in the nation on standardized tests and a high rate of illiteracy among adults. According to the New Mexico Coalition for Literacy, at least 46 percent of New Mexicans over the age of 16 are functionally illiterate — which means they are able to tell time and locate an intersection on a map, but they read little else.
“It goes back to the beginning of the recession, when school districts started cutting librarians,” Karin Trujillo, an organizer for the Battle of the Books and a librarian in Los Lunas, said during the event Saturday. Her district is supportive of the program, she said, but limited in resources. It has just four librarians across 16 schools.
“At school, they stress athletics so much,” said Manny Beltran of Artesia, who had made the fourhour drive to Santa Fe with his three children.
Kimber, 9, and Coda, 11, both students at Yucca Elementary, were competitors Saturday; their older brother, Kyler, had partici- pated in previous years but had aged out of the battle.
“We’d like to see them read a whole lot more and not only encourage them, but reward them,” Beltran said.
But he said Artesia is a big football town and doesn’t support — financially or otherwise — the reading program. “I can’t say what it is exactly, but the boys’ football gets a whole lot more support than the readers.”
Lori Dattola, whose granddaughter was competing Saturday and attends Peñasco Elementary, also in Artesia, said she agreed “200 percent” with Beltran’s assessment.
Sports teams are transported in expensive buses, she said, but “the parents do this all on their own when it comes to academics, and that’s unfortunate.”
She said her granddaughter’s school didn’t provide any funding for the reading program. Contributions for the books, entrance fees and travel were all paid by a parents association. To buy all the books, she noted, can cost upward of $400.
Las Cruces resident Igor Sevostianov, whose 11-year-old daughter, Ksenia, was competing on Team 14, said this year’s event was smaller than in previous years — and he suspected it was because of a lack of school support.
“It’s really sad,” he said. “They do not even pay the teachers [to participate], which is why even our librarian was not able to come.”
But Sevostianov, whose older son was twice on winning teams at the battle and is now a freshman at Harvard University, continues to see value in the event.
Mary Helen Ratje of the J. Paul Taylor Academy, a charter school in Las Cruces, blamed the declining role of books in education on the increasing emphasis in recent years on testing and the laser-focused Common Core curriculum.
Trujillo, the Los Lunas librarian, agreed. “With Common Core, we are told we have to teach XYZ, so reading for enjoyment has gone away,” she said. Administrators in her district have even pressured her to staff the library with only Common Core materials, she said.
“The library is the last safe place in school where you can make your own choice,” she said.
Still, a love for literature was on full display at the community college on Saturday.
From a classroom designated Command Central, Trujillo and other volunteers — teachers and high school students, many of whom were former battle alums — tallied the results of the ongoing battles and fielded “challenges” by cellphone of questions that raised objections among contestants.
Santa Fe schools have been participating in the Battle of the Books for a handful of years. It started first at Amy Biehl Community School and then expanded to Chaparral, Tesuque and Salazar elementary schools, and to Capshaw and De Vargas middle schools. An anonymous donor footed the bill for all of their books and entrance fees, said Angelina Quintana, the battle sponsor for Chaparral.
“It’s really fun to get to have the competition and read a variety of different books,” said Quintana’s grandson, Patrick, whose team won half its battles Saturday.
In the early afternoon, Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales arrived to announce the winners. More than 40 students from across the state took home medals and new books.
“Whether it is go to the moon, whether it is to become president of the United States, whether it is inventing a cure for cancer,” Gonzales told the large audience of both kids and adults, “when you fall in love with reading, you can be and do anything you want. … And that is good for our state.”