FAIRMONT - It's two for two for teen readers in Martin County, who managed to win the second annual "Battle of the Books" recently. In fact, two of the five teams from Martin County took both first and second place.
The names of the students on the first-place team may sound familiar, as three out of four made up the winning team last year. Kaity Crampton, Dustin Porter, Joanna Kautzmann and Brooke Wohlrabe took first place by one point, winning each team member a portable DVD player.
Wohlrabe, who was the new member to the team this year, was impressed by the entire event.
"I read a lot during my free time, and I'd always see Kaity in the library, too," she said of how she got involved with this year's Battle of the Books. "We started sitting together when we read, and she asked me if I wanted to do the Battle of the Books and she explained what it was."
The four required reads for this year's contest were "The Hunger Games," by Suzanne Collins, "Speak," by Laurie Halse Anderson, "The Graveyard Book," by Neil Gaiman, and "The Off Season," by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. All the titles are young adult novels.
"The majority of us read all the books," Wohlrabe said of the team's strategy. "I took a lot of notes, wrote down the names of key characters, years that things happened."
Wohlrabe said her favorite of the four was "The Hunger Games," the first of a science fiction trilogy that is gaining popularity.
"It's amazing, the whole trilogy," she said. "When I was at Barnes and Noble, there were already T-shirts out, and they're preparing for the third part of the trilogy to be released (later this month)."
Because "Battle of the Books" had 19 teams competing, this year's event was held at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato.
"We ran out of room last year at the Mankato library because so many people were there," said Martin County Library director Jenny Jepsen.
A special treat for contestants was that two of the authors sent in video questions for the teams to answer.
"They did it specifically for us," Jepsen said. "They said, 'Congratulations on Battle of the Books.'"
Authors Anderson and Murdock were the two who sent in video questions.
"It was an intense competition," Jepsen admitted. "It was neat to see all of them concentrating when the question was read, and then all their heads would quickly go down as they start writing their answers."
And of course, the participants were excited about the prizes. Along with free copies of each of the four books, each participant got a gift card for Barnes and Noble.
"We went there right away afterward," Wohlrabe said. "I saw so many of the same kids we saw there. I wanted to go up to them and find out what type of books they were looking at and buying."
"We had a great time. It was a great year, and we worked hard to get to where we were," Crampton said. "We had a good time, we were laughing all the time, and I can't wait until next year."
Wohlrabe, however, doesn't want to wait until next year.
"It'd be great if it was more than once a year," she said. "Maybe it's something we could do at the school, make a book club or something."
Funding for the "Battle of the Books" is from grants and funding from the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation, Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust.
"Without them, we wouldn't have the prizes, which would probably mean no competition," Jepsen said. "We hope we can keep doing it, and I'm proud that we had a winning team again this year. We had representation from all nine counties in our area, and it's a very neat event because of that."
