For the Auburn Reporter

Terminal Park Elementary School captured the silver medal at the King County Global Reading Grand Challenge at the King County Library System Service Center in Issaquah on March 22.

Representing South King County, Terminal Park team members Wyatt Pritchard, Isabel Kim, Zachary Botz, Emma Hon and Jordan Widener reached the Grand Challenge by winning the school, district and regional challenges.

In the finals, Terminal Park faced Woodridge Elementary School from the Bellevue School District.

Teams must demonstrate knowledge of 10 books chosen by King County Library System librarians. A typical format consists of three rounds of eight questions. Questions are open-ended, fill-in-the-blank, true or false or multiple choice. Teams are given time to confer and must come up with one answer for each question.

The Grand Challenge is three rounds of 10 questions.

Amy Anderson, Terminal Park library teacher, and Joni Schwartz, Terminal Park library paraeducator, coached the team.

As finalists, the students also had the opportunity to meet guest author Trudi Trueit and receive an autographed copy of her book, “No Girls Allowed (Dogs Okay)”.

The Global Reading Challenge is modeled after the popular Battle of the Books.

In 2001, the first Global Challenge in King County was initiated in Auburn with two schools and 42 students. This year more than 2,000 students on 286 teams representing 56 schools and 18 school districts participated in the challenge.

This collaborative effort was born primarily to promote the love of reading and to have fun while doing it. It also has provided a recreational outlet for readers, promoted teamwork and introduced children to a wide variety of multicultural reading materials.