Playoff decides literature quiz

By ANNE BESTON and STUART DYE

A sudden-death finish added to the pressure at the children's literature quiz yesterday when more than 50 young book buffs battled it out for top prize.

The first foreign team invited to the New Zealand final of the Paper Plus Lit Quiz, British champs Dunblane High School from Scotland, walked away with the trophy but runners-up Evans Bay Intermediate from Wellington consoled themselves by pointing out they were "New Zealand champs".

The event was part of the annual Storylines Festival of Children's Illustrators and Writers, with thousands of youngsters and their parents turning out for a festival of literary events involving a reading from author Margaret Mahy, games and writing competitions, puppets and storytellers.

Teams of four huddled over a buzzer to answer about 100 questions in 10 literary categories, the top 14 teams battling it out after a year-long round of regional quizzes.

But whether it was a comic character, poetry or the opening paragraphs of a novel, these children know their books.

The American born in 1899 who wrote three books for children? Quiz master Wayne Mills had barely finished the question before the answer was buzzed straight back: E.B. White - the man who created mouse Stuart Little.

But that sudden-death, three-question quiz-off was a real nerve-rattler.

"It was a high-pressure situation. We wanted to win but we tried to stay calm," said Sam Irving, a 13-year-old from Dunblane whose favourite literary genre is "fantasy adventure".

Favourite author J.K. Rowling? No, British author Paul Stewart.

The four Dunblane High champs will visit tourist hotspots including Rotorua and Lake Taupo before returning home.

They were impressed with the "glitz" of the New Zealand event, held at Auckland's Aotea Centre.

"The UK event wasn't quite so glamorous," said Dunblane school librarian Shona Sinclair, one of three teachers who accompanied the team.

(Dunblane is better known to New Zealanders as the site of a tragic killing spree in March 1996 in which a man killed 16 children and a teacher in a primary school gymnasium.)

Mr Mills, who established the quiz in 1991 to promote children's literature, said overseas teams would now feature regularly at the New Zealand final after his trip last year to run quizzes in Britain.

Teams from South Africa, Australia, Hong Kong and Canada are likely to be invited in coming years.

"The event has just grown and grown," he said, guessing that at least some of the British interest stemmed from the success of The Lord of the Rings movies.

Mr Mills has a dream set in 2010 with international attention focussed on Scott Base, Antarctica, where the world's finest young literary minds are battling it out to be the best.

And it's a dream which is looking increasingly possible as his "making reading cool" ethos spreads across the globe.

The idea is to make reading a competitive sport, not such a solitary activity.


"In my school life I never saw someone rewarded for reading," said Mr Mills. "I decided to do something about it."

An energetic and impassioned advocate of children's literature, he believes the quiz is a highly effective mechanism to celebrate reading among children.

The quiz began with 14 teams in Waikato in 1991. Word spread and teams from first Hawkes Bay, then Auckland, joined.

But the real turning-point came in 1997 when Paper Plus began sponsoring the event, allowing it to spread nationwide.

Last year Mr Mills supplemented the sponsorship from his own pocket to take the competition to the UK.

Hundreds of 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds took part and education leaders took notice.

Mr Mills was dubbed the Kids' Lit Tsar - and New Zealand's approach to literacy was on the international education map.

Mr Mills said of the quiz: "In Britain they had seen nothing like this and just fell in love with it. Children are learning about literature, learning that reading can be fun and learning that they are part of a global community of readers."

All the questions come from Mr Mills' own literary knowledge that he has spent years developing.

They range from Greek myths to Harry Potter; Dr Seuss to Romeo and Juliet.

Mr Mills wants to get every English-speaking nation involved.

His dream is for a huge grand final held at Scott Base in six years' time. He hopes the competition can go from a labour of love to become his lasting legacy.

"And imagine that reward, all because a child picked up a book and was willing to open his or her mind and enjoy reading."


Sample questions from the children's literature quiz

Test your knowledge of children's literature in a sample of the questions faced by contestants:

This author was born in London on January 18, 1882. At 11 he won a scholarship to Westminster School. He married in 1913, and in 1920 his son was born, an event that was to change the history of children's literature. During a rainy holiday in Wales in 1923, he wrote a collection of verses titled When We Were Very Young.

2. The author of this title was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany. The literary work for which she is famous was originally published under the title The Annexe in 1947 - two years after the author's death. The novel has sold more than 13 million copies in 50 languages, and has been made into a stage play and a film.

3. This movie had a Polish director and was released by American Zoetrope and Warner Brothers in 1993. At the centre of the film is a young girl, orphaned in India. The child is sent to a forbidding gothic house in the north of England to be looked after by her widower uncle, Lord Craven. The film was based on a novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1911.

4. This folktale was about a man who offended Tane, god of the forest. He had been asked to find and chop down the largest totara tree that he could find. He was so impressed when he found a giant totara that he cut it down without giving thanks to Tane. When he arrived the next day to start transforming the tree into a canoe, the tree was standing whole and erect again.


Answers:

1) A.A. Milne.

2) The Diary of Anne Frank.

3) The Secret Garden.

4) Rata