YCIS Puxi participated in the Battle of the Books event organized by Shanghai American School (SAS) and had a wonderful time! YCIS fielded several teams, made up of Year 7, 8 and 9 students. Battle of the Books may sound nerdy, but it was fun! The requirements were to read a specific selection of ten books, which my team divided evenly among the five of us. When a book was read, the team member who read the book shared knowledge about the book so that all members understood what it was about. Then, at SAS, we competed in book related activities, including a ‘Kahoot’ quiz, a ‘match the quote to the book’ game and a cake design challenge in which we had to make a cake that represented one of our group’s ten books.
For Jasmine in Year Seven, the most memorable part of ‘Battle of the Books’ was making the amazing cakes. For those of you who don’t know, Thi Huy is a great baker and the cake she designed was amazing! Our cake was made of multi-colored butter cream”. Cindy Chen, also from Year Seven, said that she wasn’t expecting to see Laurel Snyders, author of Orphan Island, at the Battle of the Books competition and was very excited to meet her. We were all impressed by the SAS library; it was amazing. Many members of Team YCIS enjoyed cake designing the most, according to written comments after the Battle of the Books. “I remember this one cake that gave me burnt [Sponge Bob square pants] Krabby Patty vibes…” said Leah Heimer.
My group include Lou Gompel, Isaac Cook, Thi Huy, and Luiza Nunes, in addition to me. Lou Gompel and Thi Huy both agreed that our group worked amazingly together because we were all prepared and all chimed in coherently and effectively when required. One of our group members got sick the night before the competition so we called her and asked for information/help about the two books that she read. In the end, everything worked out nicely and we all had a great time — although SAS won the event! Everyone in my group said that they would definitely participate in Battle of the Books again!
Even though none of the YCIS teams won the competition, we all enjoyed reading like crazy, partaking in activities, competing in quizzes, making cakes and most of us, if not all of us, hope to compete in the Battle of the Books again next year.
Zachary Ruwitch – Y8D