Serendipity With a Battle of the Books Team

Serendipity

Lory fondly remembers the Serendipity book series by Stephen Cosgrove both from her childhood and also as a mother. 

Recently, we had a fun experience with a different sort of serendipity. We were at Exploration Commons, where we do a lot of our podcast work, building our audio editing skills – a work in progress. Lory found herself in an unexpected conversation with a woman wearing a sweatshirt from a local independent bookstore, Rudolph Girls. What started out as a conversation about the bookstore quickly turned into a conversation about the Battle of the Books. She and a handful of elementary school kids and a few parents were there for the first meeting of their Battle of the Books team. 

Two Sides followers might remember that Lory and I have significant Battle of the Books connections. Lory’s son competed on a battle team, I have emceed a Battle event for a number of years, and Lory and I were part of the winning team in the inaugural adult Battle of the Books After Hours last spring. 

As we talked with the coach of this team, we were invited into a meeting room to talk with the kids participating in the Battle. We hadn’t planned for it, but we found ourselves with a chance to touch on things that are important to us; promoting literacy, making reading fun, and supporting independent bookstores. And, all with a bunch of kids excited to read. Serendipity!

We had a fun conversation about our Battle experience, including sharing a picture of our Team Ted shirts. The kids didn’t seem to like the shirts as much as adults do. Go figure! We talked about how exciting it is to be in the competition. Their team’s event will be in the gym of a local high school and I told them how Battle competitions feel just like a big basketball game. Then we talked about preparing for the Battle including the very important work of picking a name and designing t-shirts.  

We ended our time with me and Lory taking a picture with the kids. We are such celebrities!

We’ll be seeing the kids again, because the Battle event I emcee is the same one they will be competing in. Serendipity. Good luck to this group and all the teams participating in the Battle!  Lory and I are both looking forward to seeing Team Grim Readers again and hoping we might get an opportunity to interview the winning team for the Two Sides to the Story podcast and website.