Join Michelle Davies as she shares a successful and engaging program to hook middle school readers onto verse novels.
This round of wide reading sessions with Year 6 had a clear purpose: to introduce students to verse novels as a rich and distinctive narrative form, and to connect that experience to their classroom poetry unit. What I didn’t anticipate was just how much impact it would have.
Why Verse Novels?
A verse novel combines the storytelling of a novel with the style and rhythm of poetry. Where a conventional novel builds its scenes from paragraphs, a verse novel builds them from poems. The story is the same kind of story. The language just moves differently, and for middle school readers, the difference turns out to matter enormously.
Literacy researchers have identified verse novels as a highly engaging format for teens, largely because they feel visually approachable. The short lines, white space and varied layouts make them less overwhelming than dense blocks of prose, which can be especially helpful for reluctant readers or students who lack confidence in reading. There’s also a sense of quick progress as pages turn easily, helping students build confidence and momentum as they read.
The poetic structure also invites readers to slow down and “hear” language, making it a natural fit for reading aloud, a quality that would prove central to everything that followed.
Enter: The Book Battle
As part of our wide reading program, our three Year 6 classes visit the library each week. In a recent session, I had two main goals: to introduce students to verse novels and connect that experience to their classroom English unit on poetry. The Book Battle was designed to achieve both, drawing on the competitive energy middle schoolers bring to just about everything they do.
The premise is simple: two verse novels go head-to-head. I read the opening chapter of each aloud, students listen, then vote for their favourite. The winner advances. Over six lessons and four rounds, the field narrows from eight books to four quarterfinalists, then two semi-finalists, and finally one champion, with each successive chapter building as the stakes rise.
Results were projected live onto our library screen, and the atmosphere lifted straight away. Students leaned forward, some cheering, others turning to friends in disbelief as the rankings shifted. The energy in the room was everything.
When the winning book was finally announced, it was handed to the classroom teacher to be read aloud in the weeks ahead. The students already knew how it began. They were already invested.
Three Classes, Three Champions
What surprised and delighted me most was this: all three Year 6 classes heard the same books, the same chapters, and voted independently, yet each class produced a different champion. When this was revealed, the discussion that followed was exactly the kind of rich literary conversation we aim to foster. Reading is subjective. Taste is personal. Yet the books we love are worth arguing for.
The buzz extended well beyond the library. Students who had voted a book out in round one were suddenly curious about why another class had championed it, and demand for the verse novel collection quickly followed.
After the final vote
There is no right answer in a Book Battle. The outcome isn’t decided in advance, and no external award defines the winner. Students, through their collective choices, determine which book earns its place in their space. That sense of ownership is, I believe, one of the most powerful ways to build reading identity in middle school.
What stayed with me long after the champion was crowned was watching students leave the library carrying a book they had chosen, argued for, voted for, and claimed as their own.
It doesn’t get better than that.
Michelle Davies
Librarian (Middle & Senior School)
The Hutchins School
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