On March 6, Battle Sponsors and Dr. Picard got together to review the books that have been recommended by students and teachers for 2019-2020.
All of the books that were recommended this year have merit. They’re popular, and they have the potential to excite readers – but that doesn’t mean they’d be a good Battle book. Here are the books we were not able to include on this year’s ballot, with an explanation as to why.
We encourage you to use this as a “to read” list!
- The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
- THUG is a widely popular book. It’s already spawned a movie (you should see it), and teachers across the county (and across the country) are using it in English classes! That kind of popularity is fantastic, but can be problematic in a competition! We want to include this excellent author, so we have replaced THUG with Angie Thomas’s new book: On The Come Up
- Refugee – Alan Gratz
- Refugee was widely used in LCPS middle schools last year. Since this book has already had a lot of exposure, we want to use Battle to promote other books.
- The Selection – Keira Cass
- This book has already achieved a high level of popularity, and might be better at the middle grades.
- Storm Runner – J.C. Cervantes
- Great book for those who loved the Percy Jackson series. We highly recommend it for middle grades.
- Band of Brothers – Stephen Ambrose
- With an HBO series and published over 25 years ago, there’s not much more we could do with this book in Battle.
- Eragon – Chrisopher Paolini
- Classic fantasy book! Unfortunately, like others on this list, it came out quite a while ago, and has spawned films.
- The Young Elites – Marie Lu
- We recommend this book for those who like darker tales of villains. As much as we love Marie Lu, we want to avoid showcasing the same author two years in a row.
- Mistborn – Bryan Sanderson
- This is another classic fantasy book, but it may be just a little too much for a Battle Book.
- Eleanor and Park – Rainbow Rowell
- We loved this book so much we made it a Battle Book in 2014-2015!
- The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
- We loved this book so much we made it a Battle book in 2009-2010!
Once again, thank you for recommending books! We could not do this without you!
Voting will open on 3/11/19, and will close at 4:00 PM on 3/22/19. You can vote here on the blog, or get a link from your battle sponsor.
Related Posts: Recommended Books 2019-2020
I was wondering what classifies as “too much” in Mistborn. I personally haven’t read it however I would like to have a better perspective on the rules and your mindset when choosing books.
-Alex Simon, President of BOTB at HHS
This is a great question! First, it is a very long and intricate book. While that doesn’t completely disqualify a book (Full Body Burden comes to mind), it does often make it more difficult for sponsors to write questions for the battle, and for students to study the book for competition. Secondly, we try to choose books that have broad enjoyment potential. Mistborn is what we might call a “high fantasy” book; these “genre” books tend to be for niche audiences. Again, that might not in and of itself disqualify a book from inclusion, but the two factors together are cause for concern. Overall, we want students to stretch their ideas of what types of books they are interested in, but we don’t want to provide a book that might alienate readers and potential battlers.