Students from Pattonville’s elementary schools and Remington Traditional School participated in the annual Districtwide Elementary Mark Twain Book Battle today at the Learning Center. The Rose Acres Winterborne Warriors team won the event. The Willow Books from Willow Brook Elementary and the Millionaires for the Battle from Bridgeway Elementary School finished second and third place, respectively.

The Book Battle is a trivia-type competition hosted by Pattonville's school library technology specialists. During the event, teams of students compete on their knowledge of a predesignated list of books. Students must answer questions with the book title and author to earn full points.

Fifth grader William Purnell said he read every Mark Twain Award nominee on this year’s list.

“I started reading them in November and read all of them once,” he said. “I actually read ‘Raising Lumie’ twice.” 

Each year, Missouri students in grades 4 to 6 vote for their favorite book from a list of nominated titles. The Mark Twain Award is awarded to the author by the Missouri Association of School Librarians.

This year’s nominees and books read by students competing in the Book Battle are:

1. “A Wish in the Dark” by Christina Soontornvat
2. “City Spies” by James Ponti
3. “Coop Knows the Scoop” by Taryn Souders
4. “Millionaires for the Month” by Stacy McAnulty
5. “Raising Lumie” by Joan Bauer
6. “The Blackbird Girls” by  Anne Blankman
7. “The Elephant's Girl” by  Celesta Rimington
8. “The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter” by Aaron Reynolds
9. “War Stories” by Gordon Korean
10. “When Stars Are Scattered” by Victoria Jamieson
11. “Wink” by Rob Harrell
12. “Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valor” by Ally Carter

This was the first team victory for Rose Acres library technology specialist Nicole Mikel who got to take home the district’s first place banner for the year.

Purnell said it felt pretty good to win the competition.

“There was so much pressure during the Book Battle,” he said. “There were some questions that we thought we got wrong, but we ended up getting right. When they announced the answers, it was a huge relief.” 

After the final round of questions, the students were able to Zoom with author Rob Harrell, author of “Wink” which is a 2022-2023 Mark Twain Award Nominee, and ask him questions about writing. 

Students ate lunch before the final awards ceremony.

Pattonville elementary library technology specialists are Nora Bakula (Bridgeway), Sierra Dertinger (Drummond), Kimberly Dickinson (Willow Brook), Dawn Kasper-Bamberger (Parkwood), Nicole Mikel (Rose Acres) and Jill Ramig (Remington Traditional). 

Pattonville Heights Middle School will be hosting the Area-Wide Middle School Book Battle on May 9.