A Su Valley middle school team placed second borough-wide in the annual Battle of the Books competition last Monday at Houston Middle School. From Su Valley, eleven students split up in three teams. After the first three rounds, two Su Valley teams were eliminated, but one team advanced to the finals. Su Valley students Libby Reinert, Heidi McKee and Sammy Davenport tied for first in the final round and had to compete in a “sudden death” round, in which the students had only 15 seconds to answer a question. Battle-of-the-Books coach Kathy Trump said that they went through nerve-wracking questions and answers until Su Valley lost on the sixth question. The fateful question was, “In which book did a character wonder what it would be like to be inside of a burning ember.” The answer was The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. In the end, the team placed second in the borough-wide competition.
Next week, the Battle of the Books continues at the high school level.
