Every school year, students in the fifth grade anxiously await the Ross Media Center's Battle of the Books. Preparations for our updated version of the Battle begins each January culminating in a Battle Game Day in May. All students, randomly placed on teams, participate within their class. Their most awesome tasks include brainstoriming team questions which are incorporated into a colorful Power Point Presentation of their own design and creation.  So many decisions have to be made by the team members. Inquiring minds want to know, who is going to read and become the expert on what books? Who will be the team secretary, supply manager, scorekeeper, or auditor? Also, like many of us in the "real world," team members have to learn to cooperate with each other and keep their focus on their original strategies. One can be assured these strategies will be enthusiastically challenged when team members have to decide on stump questions, slide formats, and slide designs. In addition to handling team member duties, students are welcomed to voluntarily attend a weekly Library Lunch meeting for purposes of enriching their readings and prepping for game day. Author and book club websites are introduced relative to the designated Battle books giving readers more insight to authors' purpose and virtual peers' reading interpretations. There are no losers with the Ross Media Center's version of the Battle of the Books!

The 5th Grade Battle of the Books List for 2008 consists of the following titles and authors:

• Bread Sister of Sinking Creek by Robin Moore
• Frindle by Andrew Clements
• George Washington's Breakfast by Jean Fritz
• Ghost of Lizard Light by Elvira Woodruff
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
• Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse
• Million Dollar Shot by Dan Gutman
• Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr
• Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
• The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis