OBOB (Oregon Battle of Books) Grade 3-5 finals were held last month at SES. The final contestants were the Smarties vs. The Pork Chop Piggies. The Smarties won by one point in the tiebreaker round. The members of The Smarties are third graders Alden, Hazel, Honore, June and Zelda. In OBOB, teams of four or five students each answer questions from sixteen books that they have read. There are five stages in the OBOB. There are two battles where you cannot get eliminated, followed by semifinals, finals, regionals and finally a statewide competition.
Here are some examples of the hundreds of questions asked in OBOB battles—In Twins by Varian Johnson and Shannon Wright, what are the names of Maureen and Francine’s teddy bears? In The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, what is the robot’s name? In which book is there a character named Roz? The Smarties were very excited and scared going into the district-wide regional battles on Saturday, March 15 at McDaniel High School. Though they didn’t win, they returned to Sunnyside to perform in two shows of SES’s original musical production Teleported.
