The view from Saturday

How has Mrs. Olinski chosen her sixth-grade Academic Bowl team? She had a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a good team? It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinski's team won the sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth grade, too. And when they went on to even greater victories, everyone began to ask: How did it happen?

This is a tale about a team, a class, a school, a series of contests and, set in the midst of this, four jewel-like short stories -- one for each of the team members -- that ask questions and demonstrate surprising answers. 

A thoroughly enjoyable read, that leaves you thinking way after you have closed the book. I read this as part of a Newberry medal reading challenge. It's the 1997 medal winner, it's  not the first Newberry medal book I have read. I read the 2002 winner   A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin) , 2001 honour book Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick Press), 2000 honour book 26 Fairmount Avenue by Tomie dePaola (Putnam), 1994 medal winner The Giver by Lois Lowry (Houghton), 1992 medal winner: Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Atheneum), 1968 medal winner: From the mixed up files of Mrs Basil E. Franweiler also by E.L. Konigsburg. I also have read 1957 honor book:Old Yeller by Fred Gipson, 1948 honour book Li Lun, Lad of Courage by Carolyn Treffinger (Abingdon), 1945 honour book The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (Harcourt), 1933 medal winner Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth Lewis (Winston),