Battle of the Books 2026!

Each year, Overlake runs two Battle of the Books sessions: one for all 5th graders, and one for interested 5th-8th graders. In the latter, we compete virtually against teams from Open Window and St. Thomas schools. Students have a few months to read some of the books from the list they helped choose, and the librarians from the three schools, plus any faculty we can recruit, read the books and write up questions. 

In the traditional format, questions always start: “In which book…” and the answer is always the author and title. Example: “In which book does a military leader tell her troops that they have to be prepared to square dance at a moment’s notice?” Answer: Court of the Dead by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro. For the 5th grade Battle and the 5th-8th grade prelims, we added some Kahoot and Jeopardy-style rounds to switch things up, though for the 5th-8th finals against the other schools, we went with traditional rounds since our experiment last year with different formats had some technological issues.

All the Battles went well, and many heartfelt congratulations go to the following teams:

5th Grade: Team Orca Red took the win! 

Adya, Chloe, Evie, Ayver, Zoe, and Viyan

5th-8th Grade Three-School Battle :Team Overlake Two triumphed! 

Clara, Sana V., Selina, Antonia, Landon, Zoe L.

Well played, all!

For more about Battle of the Books, check out the two articles I've written for the Association of Independent School Librarians blog:

Traditional Format: Battle of the Books

Multi-Format: Battle of the Books on Steroids (or, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time)

Many, many thanks go to Lauren Richey from Open Window and Erin Quarterman from St. Thomas, as well as to their dedicated readers. Thank also to all the faculty who helped read books and write up questions, those who helped judge the prelims, and to Amman Berhe for being such a tremendous help with the technology.