Middle Grade Madness! discussion

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

The Captains/Co-Captains:
Team Ivy Lovely - Kadi (me)- Captain
Team Moose Flanagan - Aeriell - Captain
Team Alcatraz Smedry - Audrey Hammer - Co-Captain
Team Alcatraz Smedry - Chara - Co-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. 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.

*There is no task guidance sheet this year because I wasn’t sure if it was actually useful in the past…*

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 only 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 to my lovely fellow captains/co-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.

@Chara and Audrey I’ve made you both co-captains which is not something we’ve had before, but basically we had 4 willing captains and only 3 teams but I know you guys have all captained before so I’m confident in your abilities and basically you’re both like captains together for one team. Hopefully that’s ok and we’ll have a lot of fun!😊

Hey captains just to clarify for your teams:
If your book has a title with more than one Title Word in it then you get Title Points for each Title Word

Also guys please let me know tomorrow if you have team members that have not checked in yet.

And please let me know by 30th August:
Your team name
Your team’s special category - or I can’t share the team spreadsheet with everyone on 31st August!

Thanks guys😊

I have contacted Jos, Miri, Patricia and they have yet to response to anything. I don't even know how to contact Michelle.

The two people who have actually responded to my messages like Alacatraz Smedry as a team and the number 9

Hey Chara I have also contacted Jos, Patricia, Miri and Michelle. She was on my team in 2022 I think so I have her account link here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7...
Once they have turned up please let me know and reconfirm your team name and special category😊

Also Aeriell I think you’re just waiting for Priya so I’ve contacted her too. If there’s anyone else you’re waiting for please let me know!

Kadi wrote: "Also guys please let me know tomorrow if you have team members that have not checked in yet.

And please let me know by 30th August:
Your team name
Your team’s special category - or I can’t share t..."

Yeah I haven't heard from them or noticed on the things so thank you for that! Classes started yesterday for me for the fall semester.

We also have our team name and category if you want me to post that.

CraftyChara wrote: "I have contacted Jos, Miri, Patricia and they have yet to response to anything. I don't even know how to contact Michelle.

The two people who have actually responded to my messages like Alacatraz ..."

Thanks for doing that.

Hey Kadi, I just went to try to message Priya and it says they aren't accepting messages. So what do you think we should do?

Hi Aeriell, yes please share your team name and special category number if you can thanks!

Also my message to Priya managed to send, so hopefully she will see it and join your discussion page. If not we will just have to crack on without the missing team members and we’ll see if they turn up soon😊

And sadly one of my team members has just pulled out😞 but I’m still excited to get going!

Hey Captains, just want to clarify because this came up in my team’s discussion:

The Title Words aren’t limited like you don’t have to get all 20 as a team and then that’s it, you can get Title Points for every book with a Title Word in it! So you can repeat the Title Words too, like if one team member read The Lie Tree, someone else can read a different book with the Title Word “lie” in it and both will get Title Points for the team.
And I think I’ve already mentioned that you can get multiple Title Points if there are multiple Title Words in the title.

Guys I’m happy for you as Captains to award Title Points yourself. There will be a column next to the page points for the Title Points and it will be blank. Remember it’s 10 points for the book if it is the Title Word of that category and 5 points if it is a Title Word of another category.
I will be checking in on each team’s spreadsheet so I will help with this where needed😊

Kadi wrote: "Hi Aeriell, yes please share your team name and special category number if you can thanks!

Also my message to Priya managed to send, so hopefully she will see it and join your discussion page. If ..."

My team is going with the team name of Moose Flanagan
Our special group is ieither 9 or 3, I don't know which ones have been claimed yet.

Thanks for letting me know Aeriell😊
We have all gone for such crazy team names this year!

My team has decided on Ivy Lovely and our special category is 13

Hey Captains, so I’m going to be on a long flight tomorrow and I’ve just realised by the time I land it will be 1st September in some countries so I will be sharing the spreadsheets with all team members tonight in advance.
Please make it clear to your team members to only start reading when it’s 1st September for them!

@Chara @Audrey any luck with your missing team members?

No luck Kadi. Safe travels

😭that’s a big shame but I’m hoping that they may turn up once 1st September actually arrives

And thanks Chara! I’m hoping to finish off some books on my currently reading shelf during the flight and then I can start the challenge with a clean slate

Hi. I looked at the team tracking spreadsheet, I understand it. (that's my good news) I don't know how to get to the tab for the other spreadsheet. Please advise!

Hi PK, it depends on what device you’re accessing the spreadsheet on, but it’s usually at the bottom of the app, there’s like a menu in the left hand corner and it should show 3 tabs. The first tab is the official challenge sheet which lists all the tasks, the second is the tracking sheet, and the third is an example of how to fill in the official tracking sheet.

Also please make sure you double check with your captain because you may only need to use and edit the tracking sheet anyway! (For my team I ask them to only fill in the tracking sheet and I edit the official challenge sheet as captain, but every team is different😊)

OOH! I found it. Thank you!

Does this count as a fifth book June's Wild Flight It's book 5.5 in the series.

Yeah Chara I’d say that counts as a 5th book!

Hey Kadi: I got this question from a person on my team:
A boy called Bat / Elana K. Arnold’? AR says LG, publisher website says Age 8-12 & School Library Journal (well-known periodical relevant to our target demographic says Grades 3-6. I’m very quickly running out of time to read the series (library books), so I need an answer A.S.A.P.

Thank you for any help!

MG is grades 6-8; I don't think I would count it, but Kadi is more generous than I.

Hey Aeriell sorry I was sleeping (time difference!). Sadly LG is LG and that book won’t count. You could still read it if you need to return it to the library soon but it won’t count for the challenge😞

Sorry if this thread is for Captains only. Question: What kinds of words count as colours? Does it have to be Blue or Green or does Pinkie Pie count too? What about flower/fruit/other noun names? I have (first name) Tangerina, (last name) Lavenders, (last name) Evergreen, & Xanthous (first name, Greek for yellow).

Hi Abigael it is for captains only but everyone seems to be chipping in, so it’s alright every now and then😂

If this is for task 33, it has to be an actual colour or a shade of a colour. Blue and Green count but “Pinkie Pie” is not a colour so that doesn’t count. Like Title Words, it won’t count if the colour is part of another word or if it’s a plural.

Flowers, fruits, nouns don’t count UNLESS they are also actual colours or shades of a colour.

Tangerina doesn’t count because that’s not a colour, Lavenders doesn’t count because it’s plural (if it was Lavender it would count because that’s a shade of purple).
Evergreen DOES count because it’s a shade of green.

All of the above also applies to task 31. For task 31 it can be the character’s first name, middle name, last name or nickname.
But like I said above it wouldn’t count if the colour is part of another word so a character with a surname like Greenwood wouldn’t count

Hope that helps!😊

Hey Captains, how are your teams finding the Title Words part of the challenge? I'm just trying to gauge if I should add more Title Words halfway through the challenge...

I need a reminder of the title word challenge.😅

I have found one book that will fulfill the title challenge.

Haha I’ve realised that the Title Word is a bit more difficult that you have to either read for the Title Point or read for the task and I wanted it to be used as much as the Golden Task Points were last year so I’ve thought of this instead of adding more Title Words:

5 points if the Title Word makes up part of a word in the Title, then 10 points if it’s on its own and 15 if it’s on its own and belongs to that specific category. What do you guys think?

I actually like this idea more and if we’re all on board we’ll backdate this change so it can be applied to all books already read!


Example:
5 points - The Seeing Stone by Holly Black
10 points - One False Note by Gordon Korman (if assigned to any task except for those in category 1
15 points - One False Note by Gordon Korman (if assigned to any of category 1’s tasks

Does being a zombie count as a superpower?

@Chara no it does not sadly

Also what do you guys think about the Title Word change proposal above?

I thought the title words could only count for that category.

So I read Swindle for category 8, but it has the word "wind" in it, so five points? Should we add those in ourselves?

Hey Kadi got another book question for ya:
Does story starts 1 week after lady died in childbirth count for 1#1 (legally in my region, these kids get “orphan pay” from the government even though other parent is still there?

Audrey wrote: "So I read Swindle for category 8, but it has the word "wind" in it, so five points? Should we add those in ourselves?"

Yes that would be 5 points. I’m going to implement the change in Title Points and put a message on all team discussion pages
Also you can put the Title Points in yourselves as Captains and I’ll also be doing it on your spreadsheets too but only for finished books

Aeriell wrote: "Hey Kadi got another book question for ya:
Does story starts 1 week after lady died in childbirth count for 1#1 (legally in my region, these kids get “orphan pay” from the government even though ot..."

Yeah technically I know you can be considered an orphan in some places if just your father dies or if just your mother dies, but for the task it has to be both parents have died for it to count for that task

Hey Captains, please let your teams know that the next Special Category will be Cagegory 3 so each task in Category 3 will be 3 points!

And I’ll reveal Category 3 on all team’s spreadsheets on Sunday night…

Hey Captains the scores are out!
Feel free to share with your team members:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Oh and please update your spreadsheets with all read books so it’ll be easier for you now that we’re almost halfway!
And category 3 is live as well🎉

Kadi, questions.

A book with three different vowels in the title: exactly three, or are more than three ok?

A book with a protagonist who loses their voice for a few chapters: selective mutism ok? does it have to be just a few chapters, or can it be the whole book?

Hey Chara,
1. More than 3 is fine! I managed to find one with all 5 vowels and I thought darn I should’ve made that task harder😂 I guess it’s good to have a mix of the hard and easier ones though

2. Selective mutism is fine because I think it keeps in spirit with the task. Also the whole book is fine, I was pretty vague with the wording of that task so it can be anywhere from literally 3 chapters (I would say 3 is a few) to the whole book

Does a sunburn count as a burn?

Does reading the graphic novel version of a book recommended by your team member count as reading the recommended book?

The Lightning Thief
The Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel

Never mind. It's 135 pages

Edit What about Coraline
Tiffani drop out so would this count?

@Chara yes a sunburn counts as a burn and yes to the second question and I hope that Coraline graphic novel is good because I’ve just added it to my TBR!

It's good Kadi, though I personally enjoyed the written novel more because the prose is so good.

Ooh ok Chara, well I have one borrow left on Hoopla for this month so if it’s on there then I might borrow it!

Does a wild rabbit count as a wild animal?