This month, the LMS Library is sponsoring a March Madness competition with an interesting literary twist- March Madness with books! The librarians have pitted 16 of this year’s Virginia Reader’s Choice books against each other in a head to head competition. The winner of the round will be determined based on which of the books in each pairing receives the most votes. In order to cast their votes, students can simply go to the library website (longfellowlibrary.org) and click on the voting link. In order to be counted, votes for each round of the competition must be cast by Thursday afternoon each week (it was extended to Friday this week). The final championship round will wrap up Thursday, April 6th, so, before spring break, we’ll know which of these Virginia Reader’s Choice books LMS students love the best! In order to be informed voters, students are encouraged to find out more about the books (on the library’s March Madness page) and read as many of them as they can throughout this tournament.

To make things even more interesting-- and competitive--students are encouraged to fill out a bracket sheet to make predictions on which books will win each round of voting. Ultimately, students who guessed accurately about the book tournament winners on their bracket sheet, and who participated in all four rounds of voting, will have a chance to win a prize from the PTA (an Amazon Kindle or a Barnes & Noble gift card!). Completed bracket sheets need to be turned in to the library before the winners of the “Sweet 16” round are announced. We are currently set to announce the Elite 8 on the news show on Monday March 20th. The last chance to turn in completed brackets is first thing in the morning on Monday.

As a reminder, Battle of the Books (BOB) meets on Thursday afternoons in Room 121--across from the library. We are currently reading and discussing this year’s Virginia Reader’s Choice books (in no particular order). We are asking all BOB members to fill out this form for each of the books that they read. Ultimately, the book questions that they generate will be used for practice rounds of our competition. To find out more about this club, please visit the Battle of the Books Website.

Interested in helping out in the LMS Library?

If you have any questions about volunteering, please contact Nicole Yakatan (nyakatan@aol.com), the PTA’s awesome volunteer coordinator. We always have plenty of projects in the library!