New Haven Independent

Students in sixth through eighth grades in the New Haven Public Schools competed in the annual district Book Bowl “Final Four” at Yale’s Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall last Friday. The Book Bowl is a reading incentive program in which students are drilled on their knowledge of 10 pre-selected books and this year the teams were quizzed by hosts Lubbie Harper, Jr., CT Appellate Court Judge, and Dean Michael Yaffe, Associate Dean of Administrative Affairs at Yale University School of Music.

Only one of the four Gold Medal Finalists from last Monday’s ‘Regional Playoffs’ takes home the Grand Prize and this year it was Worthington Hooker School’s 7th grade team, the “Pointy Headed, Pretty Pink Princesses of Print” (Sophie Dillon, Tarpley Hitt, Maya Levine-Ritterman, Esther Rose-Wilen and Rachel Smith) who edged out Betsy Ross’ “Bella Books” team (Lisa Chiplinsky, Orianna Cruz, Josie Kulp, Erica Noonan and Lucy Robison) in the final round with a relentless perfect score — in fact, the WHS team kept constant pressure on their opponents and swept the field by answering all 40 questions correctly in two rounds of Friday’s reading competition including obscure questions like “In which book does a character smoke cherry sweet tobacco?” This minutia surfaced once in a one hundred and eighty-six page book that Worthington Hooker School player Rachel Smith was responsible for really KNOWING; the five teammates huddled to review the question, Rachel assured them by reciting the context of the scene and, confidence inspired and all agreed, another correct answer was fired back to the judges, “Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.”

Tough competition also came from the two other Gold Medal playoff finalists, the “Reading Extraordinaires” from East Rock Magnet K-8 School (Winy Coronado, Wen Jiang, Breno Queiroz, Amberleigh Reyes and Jessica Reyna) and the “Rockin’ Readers” from Nathan Hale K-8 School (Melissa Gargano, Alexandra Hansen, Jorge Monroy, Tommy Siemazcko and Alexandra Torres-Quinteros).

Worthington Hooker’s winning team consisted of students from all across New Haven and team spokesperson Maya Levine-Ritterman, from Westville, and Rachel Smith, from East Shore, have been members of the same mother-daughter book club since the second grade. Three Edgewood
School students, also long time members of the same book club, cheered on their hard-reading book buddies from the sidelines. Rachel summed up the positive experience with “To me it’s less about winning and more about enjoying some good books.”

The ‘Pointy Headed’ team coach, Worthington Hooker School Library Media specialist Beth Hart pointed out that in addition to the twenty readers in Friday’s Finals, the Book Bowl program benefits thousands of students in 27 schools and offers a rare opportunity for non-athletes to win medals, trophies and rewards. Another boon is that the books purchased for the program go into School circulation.

All student participants receive certificates for the voluntary competition and all the district playoff participants also receive medals. All the district finalists receive trophies and the Worthington Hooker School grand prize winners each also received $25 gift certificates from Follett books and have the honor of keeping the large Book Bowl trophy, engraved with past winners, at their school…until another team can manage to defeat them and win it away…

NHPS’ Book Bowl History, Books, Past Winners, Photo Gallery and Rules here.