Books in Battle: Championing Verse Novels in the Middle School Library

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

Stories That May Help with Transition to School

Starting school, whether in the early years or the beginning of high school, can be a challenging time. Felicity Sly kicks off the blog for 2026  with some great suggestions for books that tackle starting school. 

This post it probably a tad late for helping Kinder and Prep children approach their first day at school, but a follow up story to normalise how they may be feeling about all the new experiences may help to ease their worries.

Spot Goes to School by Eric Hill (Penguin) is the confident, no worries approach. With nearly every lift-the-flap reveal, Spot is having a great experience…only singing seems to cause anxiety (perhaps this isn’t Spot’s experience, but Eric’s?).

In contrast The Pigeon HAS to go to School by Mo Willems (Penguin Random House) has Pigeon catastrophising every possible scenario…until they finally realises that school is there to help them learn all the things that they are worried about.

Maddie’s First Day by Penny Matthews & Liz Anelli (Walker Books) and First Day by Andrew Daddo & Jonathan Bentley (Harper Collins) take the reader through all the steps of getting ready on that first school day.  Maddie’s journey takes us through the school day, but Daddo’s child’s story skips what happens during the day and then focuses on it being mum who finds the day to be a challenge (one that will get easier tomorrow).

Ozzie Goes to School by Jocelyn Crabb & Danny Snell (Harper Collins) takes a completely different perspective. Ozzie has been living a non-typical life in the Northern Territory. His days are spent helping his dad. Ozzie struggles to cope with the new experiences at school and so runs away each day. But each morning he returns to school and with the help of understanding teachers and classmates by Friday, he is running to school.

Starting Year 7 can be as confronting for some students as starting Kinder/Prep.

Are You There Buddha by Pip Harry (Hachette Australia) a CBCA Book of the Year Younger Reader’s in 2020 (written in verse) has Bee attending a new school, with a new family dynamic and many personal and environment challenges to navigate. How Bee handles these challenges, through conversations with Buddha and her family provide the story’s trajectory. 

Stand Up Ferran Burke by Steve Camden (Pan Macmillan Australia) is also in verse. This novel is set over 5 years as Ferran commences high school and navigates this experience, no longer in his older sibling’s shadow. The book is set in Canada, but Canadians are honorary Australians (aren’t they?).

Tremendous Things by Susin Nielsen (Penguin Random House) commences in Grade 9 but references a humiliating Grade 7 event that still haunts Wilbur. Wilbur’s friends help him to rise above his worst moment and embrace new challenges. (This is another novel set in Canada).

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling (Bloomsbury) tells the tale of many Grade 7s experiencing major change, as they navigate the next stage of their education – amongst other challenges of just staying alive! The characters experience all the difficulties of school, peers, teachers and change.

You Must be Layla by Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Penguin) explores an even greater challenge in navigating the high school experience. Layla, a Sudanese-Australian Muslim and scholarship student in a prestigious high school, needs to prove that she is academically worthy, whilst navigating all the normal challenges of high school student…and more.

NCACL (National Centre for Australian Children’s Literature) has a Bibliography on this topic, listed in 3 sections: Pre-school and Ages 5-8; Primary/Upper Primary; and Secondary. Download the PDF here.

Felicity Sly is a CBCA Tasmania 2026 Committee Member, and an avid (but slow) reader.

The Spark of a Story – A Year of Creative Writing with Students

As we move towards the end of the school year, Lyndon Riggall shares the wonderful writing talents of students at Cressy District High School who have engaged throughout the year with a literary program that has seen story writing skills and enthusiasm flourish. There are so many exciting ideas on show!

 

How do you make a story? That’s the first question that I have asked half a dozen rooms full of students this year. Typically, their answers have included everything from a title and an illustrator to paper, pens, and a really expensive laptop. Those things are helpful, of course, but luckily, they aren’t the most important. People have been telling stories for a very long time, and they haven’t always even had a title, let alone a MacBook Pro.

For me, there are three ingredients that form the basis of our recipe for story: a character, a setting, and a problem. I explain to the students that it doesn’t matter if your character is a person, a frog, or a piece of toast, as long as they have feelings, dreams, and a personality. Our setting can be anything: the house three doors down from yours, the bottom of the ocean, or even an imagined land where everything tastes like cake. Then, the problem of the story gives your character something to do: finding their missing shoe or building a tree house that reaches the moon. Whether the characters solve that problem or the problem solves them is the reason we keep reading.

At Cressy District High School, with the support of our principal Mark, our quality teaching coach Liz, and the team of wonderful teachers I have been working with this year, I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to implement a number of new programs with our students around the act of writing. The two that I have most enjoyed have been The Forge and Story Sparks. 

The Forge is a program for our senior cohort, with a number of students committing to spending a couple of lunchtimes each week taking on a creative writing challenge in their own time, such as describing a narrative backwards or writing about the world from the perspective of an object in their house. 

In Story Sparks, our primary school students work with me as a whole class to create a picture book from start to finish, developing and shaping shared ideas and then illustrating them to produce a complete book. Each story starts with those same three parts: a character, a setting, and a problem.

I adore the products of these collaborations with these students and their teachers, racing alongside them as each class pulls its own creation in an entirely different direction. Grade 1’s Simone Slipped! is about a girl who gets lost from her book and tries to find her way back again, while Wayward Sherrin, by one of our Grade 5/6 classes tells the story of a football that is sick of being kicked around and runs away to seek a new life. 

For a taste of exactly how these ideas come together, you can watch a video of Baarbara’s Bad Hair Day by Grade 3/4, which features them reading the story that they created alongside the amazing plasticine models that they made to help represent the different characters in our illustrations with the phenomenal support of their teacher Mrs Greig. 

I am so grateful that I have had the opportunity to embed these programs as part of the work that I have been doing this year. I have often described my own personal philosophy around literacy as the lighting of a fire: if you create the conditions by which students can learn to love stories and storytelling in their own right, I wager, the rest simply follows, and this idea is reflected in the names of each program: The Forge is a place where students use that fire to build and shape something new, while Story Sparks are the first glowing beginnings of realising that anyone can make a story for themselves.

And so we create, following each time those same beginnings to new horizons. A character, a setting, and a problem: it’s true of everything from Where is the Green Sheep? to Hamlet. I try to encourage our young people to see, through these exercises, how simple the act of creating a story is, and how joyful it can be. I am so excited by what they have made. 

Now, here’s hoping that we can keep the fires burning.

Lyndon Riggall is a writer, teacher and co-president of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival. You can find him at http://www.lyndonriggall.com or on social media @lyndonriggall.

Shadow Judging at Hutchins: From Tooth Fairies to Bandicoot Bushrangers

This year several schools in Tasmania participated in the CBCA 2025 Shadow Judging program and this week’s post shares the experiences of students from The Hutchins School with three groups of students engaging with one of short list categories. Thanks to Anna Davidson for involving her school and providing insights into the value and outcomes of the work undertaken by these students.

This year, Hutchins was delighted to take part in the CBCA Shadow Judging program. With three enthusiastic teams across different age groups, our students embraced the challenge of reading, evaluating and voting on the CBCA shortlisted books.

Our youngest team, the ELC Lunchtime Book Club, explored the Early Childhood shortlist. Whilst One Little Dung Beetle was a favourite, after much discussion, this group cast their final vote for Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Tooth Fairy (and Some Things You Did Not)—a choice that sparked plenty of giggles and curiosity.

Overall, shadow judging gave our students the chance to see books through new eyes, strengthen their critical reading skills, and experience the joy of contributing to the wider literary community. We are grateful to the CBCA for providing this opportunity and cannot wait to take part again in 2026.

Meanwhile, a small but dedicated group of Year 4 and 5 readers tackled the Younger Reader shortlist. Meeting every Monday lunchtime with hot chocolate and biscuits, they worked their way through six shortlisted novels. 

This group relished the challenge of reading within a set timeframe and often found themselves debating fiercely about which book should be crowned the winner. In the end, they chose Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger, deciding that while Fluff: Mess Up! was a strong contender (and group favourite), Tigg carried more literary weight and would stand the test of time. 

As a teacher, it was inspiring to watch students move beyond personal preference and use the judging criteria to evaluate the books. Many students reflected that they enjoyed being pushed outside their comfort zones, encountering books they might not have chosen on their own.

To celebrate their efforts, some of our shadow judges enjoyed a special excursion to the Hobart Bookshop during Book Week, where they helped choose new books for our library collection. All groups also came together for a lively pizza party, watching the official CBCA Book of the Year announcements and comparing their decisions with other shadow judges across Australia. While not all their favourites won medals, students valued the experience of being part of a national conversation about books.

Overall, shadow judging gave our students the chance to see books through new eyes, strengthen their critical reading skills, and experience the joy of contributing to the wider literary community. We are grateful to the CBCA for providing this opportunity and cannot wait to take part again in 2026.

Anna Davidson
Head of Library, The Hutchins School
W: https://www.hutchins.tas.edu.au/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/TheHutchinsSchool

Editor’s note: What a rewarding and engaging activity for these students. You can find out more about the program on the CBCA website at  https://shadowjudging.cbca.org.au/ including videos on this year’s winners and on how to get involved. Find out more: https://shadowjudging.cbca.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2025-Shadow-Judging-Program-Information.pdf 

School Adventures for Book Week

Book Week celebrations for 2025 saw many Tasmanian students embark on grand adventures with exciting activities, wonderful displays and staff and students participating in a host of activities. This week’s post provides a window into a myriad of events on the ground. Watch out for our Term 3 newsletter for a more detailed coverage.

Editor’s note: Congratulations to the school library staff that have been instrumental in promoting and celebrating Book Week in our schools. A stupendous effort!