Middle Grade Madness! discussion

Hi guys, welcome once again to my fellow captains!

The Captains:
Team A - Kadi (me)- Captain
Team B - Aeriell - Co-Captain
Team B - Chara - Co-Captain
Team B - Eden - 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 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 it has evolved over the years so it's complicated.
- The personal task points and tripwire task points DO NOT auto-populate! Please do not fill in their points boxes. If you think points for either of these have been missed or incorrectly applied, please let me know.
- 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.

It's up to each Captain and co-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 guys, so I'm sure you've all been Captains before and fantastic ones, so we all know the drill. There are more points, more tasks, and bigger teams, so any questions, please let me know.

We only have 2 teams, but I won't need a co-captain and the teams are quite big so you're all Captains together for Team B. You can nominate a main Captain or just work as a team of Captains.

Please let me know once your team have chosen a name!