New Years night was supposed to the the final night of our newish family tradition: the Christmas Book Book-Off. You may remember it from its inaugural competition last year. It began after a Battle of the Books competition at school inspired the kids to have a similar contest at home, but with a 32-book Christmas-themed bracket.
The competition was great fun last time around and we all agreed that we’d like to do it again but this year we actually planned for the competition to be completed on New Years night.
It turned out, though, that after several weeks of reading two books per night, we needed one extra night. Not because we miscalculated or anything of that sort, but because we had a tie.
Last year we broke ties by assigning the books either heads or tails and asking Siri to flip a coin. That is until it was time to vote for the final two books. We decided flipping a coin wasn’t the way we wanted to send a book to the final so we debated for quite some time. It was deadlocked.
Eventually my daughter looked over at me and said: “Mom, it’s OK if you switch your vote. I know Rudolph is a good book and it doesn’t have to make the finals for me to love it.”
Her brother had given her the book for Christmas years ago. It’s become her favourite.
Even so, Rudolph bowed out and The Poky Little Puppy’s First Christmas went on to beat The Secret Christmas in the 2023 Christmas Book Book-Off title.
This year, all through the competition the children took turns holding the tie-breaker and they never forgot when it was their turn to break a tie. It just seemed more fair than a coin-flip.
The new tie-breaker system worked well right up until the finals when the book that caused much controversy last year, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, met reigning champion, The Poky Little Puppy’s First Christmas, for all the marbles.
For similar sentimental reasons as last year, my daughter and I voted for Rudolph while my son and husband picked Poky. We were deadlocked once again and Rudolph was at the centre of it all. As luck would have it, nobody could remember who held the tiebreaker.
We spent a significant chunk of bedtime debating the best course of action. Much like last year, an arbitrary coin-flip didn’t seem fair. I posed another solution: let’s leave it for the night and read them again on Jan. 2 but with Auntie or a cousin listening in on Facetime to make it an odd number of votes.
And so we did just that.
After my husband had finished the second book, my sister said she had made her selection but that she’d only cast her vote in the event of a tie. The four of us pushed out our hands and on the count of three stuck up one finger for Rudolph and two fingers for Poky. Once again it was a stalemate, the boys on one side, the girls on the other. We all looked at my sister, who, with a big grin, flashed a two and the boys erupted in glee — The Poky Little Puppy’s First Christmas was the 2024 Christmas Book Book-Off champion!
We all accepted the result because the reality was they were both good books.
I should note that nobody could remember who won last year as I’ve misplaced the official 2023 bracket. Nobody knew until I sat down to write this column and looked up my old columns from last year trying to figure it out. Imagine their surprise when I told them Poky was in fact now a two-time champion!
After the winner was declared, we chatted about the 2024 competition and whether or not we should expand it (yes) and what the logistics may look like for next year. We all agreed some new books will need to enter the fray. How many? How should we expand the bracket? Create a play-in bracket? Swap out our least favourite for new ones? These questions and more will need to be answered before next year.
In the meantime, however, as we revelled in another successful Christmas Book Book-Off contest, my son piped up and said something I’m not sure anyone expected.
“I like this Book-Off,” he said. “Maybe we should do it in the summer, too.”
And then we were off, once again plotting an even bigger and better book bracket for family reading time.
Who says reading can’t be fun?
This post was originally published on here
