Middle Grade Madness! discussion

Hi guys, welcome to my fellow captains and our sub-captains!

The Captains & Sub-Captains:
Team A - Chara - Captain
Team A - Khushi - Sub-captain
Team B - Aeriell - Captain
Team B - Audrey Hammer - Sub-captain
Team C - Kadi (me) - Captain

If you or your team members have any questions (that aren’t addressed in the rules or the task guidance on your team spreadsheet) please feel free to ask them here so I can answer them.

I’ll also be using this space to announce stuff like the Special Category reveals and other updates, so keep an eye on this topic!

How the spreadsheet works:
- There are 3 different sheet tabs.

1. Official Challenge Sheet
- This is the main one.
- All points auto-populate so you don’t have to calculate anything yourself. Just fill in the right boxes and points will appear. Please don’t mess with the points coding! If you do by accident or you think it’s not working properly please let me know, don’t try and fix it yourself because all the coding is linked and some of it is so complicated I'm honestly surprised I managed to make it work!
- The golden task points DO NOT auto-populate! Please do not fill in their points boxes. If you think you have fulfilled the golden task criteria, then please write the reasoning in the reason box in bold and then I will review all team spreadsheets each week and either assign the golden task points or tell you why it doesn't qualify.
- Please use the British date method for filling in the start and finished read boxes like dd/mm/yy NOT the American method. Check out the Example Sheet for reference.


2. Tracking Sheet
- This is informal and optional, you don’t have to use it but it’ll make things easier for you and your team so I recommend you do.
- All the boxes align with the Official Challenge Sheet so you can copy paste the whole row from the Tracking Sheet into the Challenge Sheet to save you time.

3. Task Guidance Sheet
- This will have as much guidance on each task so we can try to pre-emptively solve any confusion. Any answers to questions asked below will be added to this sheet as the challenge goes on.

4. Example of Challenge Sheet
- This is just a duplicate of the Official Challenge Sheet with a few rows filled in to show you how you should fill in the Official Challenge Sheet.


It's up to each Captain and Sub-captain on how they divide the responsibility, but please remember as Captain that it's mainly your responsibility to make sure the spreadsheet is up to date but that doesn't mean you have to do everything!
If you're ok with it then you can allow your team members to fill in the Official Tracking Sheet if they want to.
I always like to let my team members fill in the Tracking Sheet themselves if they want to and then only I as Captain handle the Official Tracking Sheet. But there are many different ways to be in charge so make sure to discuss it with your team members where necessary.

Important for tasks:
Protagonist vs Character
A protagonist is the main character that the story is centred around. Example: Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone or Percy Jackson in The Lightning Thief
I have not used the term "main character" this year to avoid any confusion.
Where the task says character it means any character.
Every protagonist is a character but not every character is a protagonist. Example: Harry Potter is a character AND a protagonist in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Hermione Granger is a character but NOT a protagonist in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Coloured books
There are quite a few tasks this year which mention colours.
Any shade of a colour is fine, but if a cover has to be a specific colour, then more than 50% of the cover has to be that colour.
For example, this is a blue cover:
Use this link if you're not sure whether the book is more than 50% of a colour: https://labs.tineye.com/color/
Or share the book here and I can help confirm.

Hi fellow captains and sub-captains,
2 things to make clear:

1. The character name chosen for your team name has to be their full name.
For example: it wouldn’t be Team Harry it would be Team Harry Potter.
There only exception to this is when the character doesn’t have a last name like in the past we’ve had Team Charlotte named after the spider Charlotte in the book Charlotte’s Web and she doesn’t have a last name so just Charlotte was fine.

2. Each team will pick a Special Category those 3 Special Categories will be revealed on week 2, 3, & 4 and will be worth more points.
Teams can’t choose the same category so if 2 teams pick the same number, the second team to pick that number will have to choose a different category.

Also, if any team members doesn't check in by 28th August, please let me know!😊

Hi, Kadi! Been looking forward all year to this challenge!

I can't click on my sub captain's link Khushi

Hi Chara glad to have you back for another year and as one of our trusty captains!

Yeah sadly Khushi’s details on the form were not correct. I’ve put the name down on your team page provisionally but if she doesn’t reach out before we start then she will have to be removed which is a shame and annoying because I wanted all teams to be equal in numbers. Hopefully we’ll hear from her in the next few days!

Hi Khushi, thanks for replying and yes we were referring to you. Sorry I couldn’t find you because your user link from the form didn’t work and your username is not different

Please can you share a link for your challenge shelf and then I can add it to your team page.
To share a link, go on the shelf and if you are on the website then copy the address bar at the top of the page. If you’re on the app then go on the shelf and click the share button on the top right hand side and then copy the address.
Alternatively, if that doesn’t work then please accept the friend request I just sent to you and I can copy the link myself if that is easier for you

Don’t worry it’s no trouble, I’ll copy it and add it to your team’s page tomorrow!

Here are some questions. One of my teammates ask

Goodreads has the WRONG number of pages recorded for a particular edition of a book (happens quite often), do we go by what GR has or what our physical copy has? She currently has 3 books on her shelf that GR registers as "ZERO" pages for those particular editions.

Does a book still count if it has an MG rating on one AR site but on the other it has UG?

Hi Chara good questions!

It’s fine to go off the physical copy or the Amazon page. I can’t remember if the AR websites show page numbers but if they do you can go off that as well.
They might want to go on the librarians page and ask them to amend the page number of the book entry as well so it updates on the goodreads page for everyone.

It depends on the book. I’d say, share the book here so I can double check, but if it shows as MG on one of the AR websites and is also tagged as mg on the goodreads book page, then it should be ok.

Thanks! The books are...

The Amulet of Samarkand same for the sequels
On GR: Young Adult, Middle Grade & Children's Adventure
MG+ in the USA
UY in the UK

Eragon
GR has: Young Adult, Children's, and if you click the "all", it shows that 343 people have shelved it as Middle Grade, 161 for 'middle school', and more (400s) for children / childrens / kids, etc.
UG in the USA
MY in the UK that's not even MY+, just a nice safe MY!)

I’d say they’re both fine and count. There are sometimes discrepancies between the UK and US website but for both of them at least one of the websites shows it as MG or MG+ so it’s ok. Strange that they are showing as YA though given the age of the protagonists and the age they’re both marketed towards. They’re definitely middle grade books!

For everyone else, if you or your team members come across any books that aren’t MG or MG+ on either AR website and you think they should be MG then please share it here and I can confirm if they can count.
If it’s shown as MG or MG+ on at least one of the websites then it’s fine.

A funny observation.

"The title of the book starts with the letter F'

F is the sixth letter of the alphabet. Since this is our 5th year wouldn't it have been better if it was E, The fifth letter of the alphabet?

Edit: Got it :0)

@Chara That’s a really good point wow I didn’t think of that! It’s because the word five starts with the letter ‘f’

I think it works better than it being ‘e’ anyway because ‘e’ is more common than ‘f’ and I wanted the golden tasks to be a bit harder to get points for like the bonus tasks would be

Hi guys, please let me know if there’s anyone in your team who hasn’t messaged on your group page yet.

Please also let me know once you’ve decided on your team name and Special Category number as soon as!

Everybody has checked in with my team, and our team name is Cimorene from Dealing with Dragons Special category number is 11

Awesome Chara! Thanks for letting me know and Cimorene is the coolest name!

Team C has gone for the name Percy Jackson (a classic choice which I’m surprised we’ve never had in the past years)

So team B I’m just waiting for your team name. @Aeriell and Audrey please let me know as soon as!


I can’t believe we start tomorrow!

We are all here of Team B, also our name that was chosen is Sophie Foster from Keeper of the Lost Cities, Also we choose 19 for the special category number

Can't wait! I just finished reading my current book and I'm hungry for some middle grade.

Does it start to our individual time zones or is there a set one?

So turns out I have forgotten August has 31 days😂 I thought today is 1st September but it is not so we have one more day of anticipation.

@Chara I will share the spreadsheets with all team members around/after midnight UK time, but please can everyone tell your team members to only start reading books for the challenge once it is midnight in their location.
I think we did it this way in the past before and it’s more fun because some people will get to see the tasks before they can start reading so they get a couple of hours of planning as a bonus

@Aeriell another lovely team name! Also quite special for the group because we read like 5 books from that series and it was our most entertaining series readathon.
And thanks, we’ve got one of our special categories now: 19!
And my team have decided for our special category to be number 4!

Chara and Khushi, have your team chosen a special category number? Sorry if you’ve already said, I can’t remember

We said 11

Ok great thanks! Looks like we’re all ready and raring to go!

Hi fellow captains!

The spreadsheets have been shared with everyone. Please let me know if there are any questions or issues!


Also Chara, I might be going crazy but Khushi has disappeared? I've tried accessing her profile to add her shelf link to your team page and it just comes up with an error like her profile has been deleted or something🤔
I've noticed her comments from earlier on at the top of this page have disappeared which I think can happen when someone deletes their profile or removes themselves from the group. It's very strange, but I think everyone else has checked in

Are there extra points for the same person doing a whole category, or everyone doing part of a category or anything like that?

Khushi also know as KJ is MIA.

I don't know anything else about her because 1 her account was private she was also very sparse in chat.

Does the yellow highlight have any significance? Or is it just aesthetics?

@Audrey so we’re not doing the single member completing a category by themselves points this year.

Here are the points available:
- 1 point each for every task completed
- 5 points for every category completed (doesn’t matter how many members it takes to complete the task)
- Page points: 1 point for every 100 pages read. Page numbers are rounded down so 299 pages = 2 points, 301 pages = 3 points
- Special category points: the special categories each team has chosen are 4, 11 & 19. One of these will be randomly selected to be revealed in the second, third and fourth week. They will be worth double, triple and quadruple points respectively
- Golden task points: The last task of every category can give you an extra 5 points if it is one of the following:
1. The number of pages has a number 5 in it. (Example: 105 pages, 250 pages, 503 pages, etc)
2. The title of the book starts with the letter F (Example: Frizzy… The words like A, An, The DO COUNT)
3. The author’s first name starts with the letter V (Example: Veronica Roth)
4. The book is the 5th in a series (Example: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)
5. The protagonist has the letters F, I, V, & E in their name (can be their full name)

@Chara yellow highlight where? If you mean the last task of every category it’s supposed to signify that those are golden tasks which you can get an extra 5 points for if your book fits any of the 5 options explained in the comment above.

Hope that makes sense! There’s a lot of different points stuff happening this year but I thought it might be fun to switch it up

Whoops! My bad! You're right and I do like the idea.

Haha no don’t worry about it I probably should’ve explained it from the start!

My teammate wants some clarification.

Re: Task 89
"A book that was published in the 1900s"
Is this 1900-1909, or 1900-1999, (i.e. published before 1910, or the year 2000; a ten year span or 100 years?)

Re: Task 87
"A book with a character who is 70 years old or older"
Is that in reference to an age of a character within the book (ancient old dude, 80 year old woman, etc.), or
a character who would be more than 70 years old as of today, 2024? The first one, right?

Also Task 11
"A book published by two or more different publishers".
Does that INCLUDE foreign language editions? Or are we only counting English reprints?

Also, fwiw, spanner is the UK term for a wrench (crescent wrench, for example). Someone's bound to ask! ;)

For #13, can the three objects include animals and people or only inanimate objects?

@Chara here are the answers:
1. 1900s means until 1999
2. 70 years old in the book which I think is the first one described in the question
3. foreign language editions are included

I forgot to write about the wrench/spanner thing in the task guidance but I do remember googling it at the time I made the task. Thanks for sharing that will probably help with confusion for some!

@Audrey inanimate objects because there are other tasks that deal with people and animals on the cover


These are good questions guys, if your team members have any more, please share them😊

Kadi! One of my teammates Georgeann can’t access the spreadsheet without a code

Hey Chara, Georgann sent an invite request for the spreadsheet from another account which I accepted. Please let me know if there’s still issues for them accessing the spreadsheet from their other email!

Great! Thank you. I will let you know.

This book A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking isn't on any of the AR lists. Its won awards for both children's and YA. The MC is 14. Does it count as MG?

Given the protagonist’s age and the fact that it is tagged as middle grade on the entry page, I’d say it’s most likely MG or maybe seven MG+ but mistakenly labelled as YA by readers who aren’t familiar with Middle grade.
Although I haven’t read it, nothing in the synopsis suggests it’s above mg so I feel like it’s been mis-marketed as YA!

Great! I actually started reading it and would definitely considered it to be MG+.

CraftyChara wrote: "Great! I actually started reading it and would definitely considered it to be MG+."

I've read it, and that feels right to me.

@Audrey Great!

@Kadi for task 8 "A book with a scene where the protagonist encounters a bear" would a Teddy bear encountering other teddy bear count?
Example: Spark and the League of Ursus

Task 83: "A book that is a companion book or sequel to an animated movie" Smek for President! would this count? The first book was adapted into a movie and the author wrote this book later with references to it.

Award/Accolade recipient, does it include "Commended for a Carnegie" (Carnegie runners-up, short-list, etc.)?

The golden task's are the ones in yellow right? I'm looking at my team's spreaksheet and we have one done but it's not counting it.

@Chara no to all 3!
The bear needs to be an actual bear. The bear can be not alive as in like in a museum but it still needs to be a real bear.

I would say that book doesn’t count because the animated movie needs to predate the book. Like a companion book to Frozen or something, the animated movie came first and then the book came as a companion to the movie or a sequel like a Tangled book which continues the story after the movie (I don’t know if there actually is one, just as an explanation)

Honorary mentions, shortlisted, or commended books don’t count. They have to win the actual award so no runner ups. It can be any award though, Newbury medal, goodreads choice award, etc.

@Aeriell yeah the golden task points don’t autopopulate like the other tasks because I don’t think there’s any coding that could make that work.
Please make sure you put in the reason box which criteria it fits and how it fits it and then I can review and give points if it works.

Is it to late for Georgann to change the name of her MG bookshelf?

Yes that’s fine, I think the link to the shelf should still work. I don’t know if you guys use it, but I do and it’s quite useful.

If once the name to the shelf is changed and the link doesn’t work then let me know Chara and I can add the new link to the top of your team page for you

task #40 The Monster Garden? It's a stretch on the 'environmental' theme - anti-animal cruelty, possibly could be seen as an anti-animal experimentation and genetic engineering message.

@Chara If there’s a link between the anti animal cruelty and that being better for the environment then I’d say it counts.

Also guys I can see we’ve all started to complete the golden tasks so if there’s no explanation in the reason box for which criteria it fits for the golden task points then I’ll turn the line white (instead of the yellow colour it is right now) and put 0 points in the golden task point box on the last column just to make it clear for all that there’s no golden task points for that one

Also also I’ve just done the random picker and the category that will be revealed on Sunday at midnight will be…
(*drum roll for dramatic effect*)

Category 19!


I’ll also be sharing the points spreadsheet tonight and I’ll share a message on here once it’s live😊

Kadi, to clarify for #91 if that includes countryside anywhere in the world, or just Scotland or the British Isles or what?