Hamilton ES students win Name That Book competition

March 9, 2012— A team of students from Hamilton Elementary School won the annual Name That Book district contest, held at the Berry Center on March 6.

Coached by librarian Jennifer Lucas, the team consists of fourth-grade students Aly Baldwin (captain), Anna Antony, Nhu Bui, Anthony Gross, Jacob Lancaster, Daniel Woody and Jacob Harris (alternate).

In the 36-team district competition, students faced a series of questions that gave clues about different books, and were asked to “Name That Book.” The teams from Hamilton and Ault accumulated the most points after 10 rounds, and Hamilton won after correctly naming books in two tiebreaker rounds. The title of the book that Hamilton named to win in the final round was “Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale.”

“The teachers were not surprised at this team’s success because they’ve said before that these kids came out of the womb reading,” Lucas said. “They’re an amazing group of self-motivated, big-time readers. We just announced the books for next year’s competition, and they’ve already begun reading them.”

The mission of the Name That Book Program is to foster life-long reading by all third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students. The students are provided with a list of books and are encouraged to read as many as possible, and the program culminates with a series of contests to celebrate the students’ knowledge of the books.

Roy Garcia, associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction and school administration, asked the questions. Judges included Kathy Fisher, retired CFISD librarian; Diane Garland, Windfern High School director of instruction and district coordinator for library services; and Diane Meyer, retired CFISD librarian.