Community Evening at Glenealy

Last Tuesday, the B.o.B committee had invited all participating schools to a community evening at Glenealy School. We had representatives from various schools around Hong Kong, some participating for the first time, others with a long standing tradition of involvement with Hong Kong Battle of the Books. This provided a great opportunity for the sharing of ideas, encouraging and supporting especially the new participants.

Here is a brief summary of the main points addressed:

The philosophy behind B.o.B. is building a reading culture at schools around Hong Kong. While the competition is a great hook for students to participate, ultimately emphasis is on the wonderful books students might otherwise not read.

Some of the jobs the committee takes care of are: reading and vetting books for the lists, writing questions, grouping teams, selecting, organizing and mentoring hosts, managing the official B.o.B. website, and setting competition dates (first and third week of May).

The committee aims to put together an international list of titles, at different text levels, including new books as well as the best books from the archives. Each title is carefully vetted, recently read and recommended by at least two committee members.

The registration process goes through the website. On completion of the registration, participants will receive an electronic receipt. Considering the large number of schools participating, only one contact person/one email per registration is possible. 

Everyone is encouraged to explore the website which contains lots of valuable information as well as resources to support everyone in preparation of and during the competition.

Some tips for hosts: book the venue at your school early; send an email to the schools in your semi-final in the end of March/early April; make sure you have moderator, judges and scorers ready (visiting teams need to volunteer and support the host schools in this!). Some schools organise friendly competitions before the actual semi-finals as a practice. Especially popular are friendly competition between student and teacher teams. 

A big THANK YOU to Trish for hosting us in her beautiful library at Glenealy School.