Ardsley Literary Lions Win Second Place in County-Wide Battle of the Books Competition

Congratulations to the Ardsley Literary Lions who placed second in the ‘Battle of the Books’ competition this past weekend. The Ardsley team, made up of six students in grades 4-6 and coached by Ardsley Librarian, Maryanne Ripin, competed against 10 other teams and over 170 other middle school students from all over Westchester. Our district is proud that four students from Ardsley Middle School were part of the Ardsley library team: Malik Aaron Bradford, 6th grade; Maxine Tjaden, 6th grade; Alex Lalli, 6th grade and Liam Amouzou, 5th Grade. The other two students who were part of the team are Sedna and Ronan Gandhi from Quaker Ridge School in Scarsdale.

Battle of the Books is a very rigorous, book-based trivia tournament for Westchester youth run by the Westchester Library System. This year, the members of each team were asked to all read five books, including such fiction and nonfiction titles as The City of Ember, Titanic: Voices from Disaster, The One and Only Ivan and other challenging texts.

The library teams then competed in head-to-head rounds against each other by answering trivia questions based on the five books. The victor of each round advanced to the next round and then challenged another team.

After a full day of quizzing, the final two teams, Ardsley and Bronxville, faced off on the auditorium stage reserved for the finalists. Ardsley held strong, as the moderator, Olegbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich author of popular “8th Grade Super Zero” , asked extremely obscure questions like “What was the temperature of the water when the Titanic sank” and “Who invented the communications system used on the Titanic.” At the end of the 25 questions, and being just 4 points shy of complete victory, Ardsley Library earned 2nd place.

The Battle of the Books is a countywide competition of young adults, grades 4-9, from all participating Westchester County public libraries. The goal of the program is to promote a love of reading in kids and teens and to expose them to titles and authors that they might not encounter otherwise, to encourage them to use their local libraries as resources for entertainment and to inspire teamwork and good sportsmanship in an atmosphere of friendly competition.