New West fourth and fifth graders won a majority of the awards at an annual reading challenge — making it to the top three among 950 teams (5,700 students) from the Fraser Valley, Coquitlam, North Vancouver, New Westminster and Surrey.
Team Turtles from Skwo:wech Elementary raced to the second position, and Team Hurricane from Herbert Spencer Elementary stormed into third place at the Reading Link Challenge (RLC), a public library and school partnership program that promotes reading among children. The First place was bagged by a team from Surrey-based George Greenaway Elementary.
“Last year, the Fire Foxes from Lord Kelvin placed third regionally, and that was our first time placing in the regional challenge. This year was amazing with New West taking both second and third,” said Alicia Dobbs, a librarian at the New Westminster Public Library.
A total of 286 Grade 4 and 5 students from six schools in New West took part in the challenge this year, she said.
The three-hour grand finale in Cloverdale, Surrey, saw the culmination of a reading challenge that kickstarted in early fall last year.
According to the Reading Link Challenge website, the big challenge starts off with the public library staff first reaching out to schools about the program at the beginning of fall. Each school then registers its teams of readers, who get sent a stack of carefully curated books by the public libraries. The students have about four months to read them all and gear up for a series of challenges.
“A total of six novels are chosen each year by a panel of experts, and most of them are really great novels … very educational, and challenging at different levels,” said Kim Thomas, librarian at Herbert Spencer Elementary. As per the RLC website, a panel of library staff look for books that have multicultural content and are written by B.C. and Canadian authors, among other criteria.
The 2022-2023 reading list included among other titles Rez Dogs by Joseph Bruchac, a story of a girl who ends up finding more about her Penacook heritage while having to shelter at her grandparents’ house during COVID-19; Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly, a tale of a deaf girl who bonds with a whale; and Jada Sly Artist & Spy by Sherri Winston, which follows a 10-year-old’s journey through the busy streets of New York.
The students and their teachers put in a lot of effort leading to the final challenge on May 10, said Thomas — “They read all six novels two or three times, made notes, made up questions to challenge each other.”
The first of a series of challenges was at the school level, with teams within the school competing against each other; the top two then participated in the New Westminster competition. And the winners from there made it to the regional grand challenge.
"It’s been a long process!," said Thomas.
So, when it was announced that New West schools bagged two awards at the regional level, there was “a big New Westminster celebration” at the venue, she said.
But more importantly, Thomas added, “It’s a really exciting way to get kids reading some really great novels, and get them excited about reading in general.”
