Middle Grade Madness! discussion

Hi guys, welcome once again to my fellow captains!

The Captains:
Team Annabeth Chase - Kadi (me)- Captain
Team Toothless - Aeriell - Co-Captain
Team Toothless - Chara - Co-Captain
Team Toothless - 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!

Hey Captainsss please let me know your team name once you’ve decided. I know there’s still a few people who need to check in. I think we’re missing half of both teams but there’s still time

I'm still waiting on Anissa & Hannah.

We haven't confirm it yet, but we like the name Artemis Fowl.

@Chara Ooh that’s a great team name! What about Patricia, Eden, and Abigael? Have they all checked in on your team’s discussion page too?

They have 🙂

I didn’t know if that name has already been used! What all names have been used Kadi?

Hey Aeriell, here are all the team names used in the past:
Coraline, Alice Queensmeadow, Logan Sweet, Lucy Pevensie, Sirius Black, Merlin, Charlotte, Morrigan Crow, Mary Poppins, Amari Peters, Matilda Wormwood, Wolf, Zenobia, Diana Barry, Remus Lupin, Anthony Lockwood, Cimorene, Sophie Foster, Percy Jackson, Ivy Lovely, Moose Flanagan and Alcatraz Smedry

And Team A have chosen Annabeth Chase!
Please let me know your team name as soon as possible😊

Our team name is Toothless The Nightfury

We still haven't heard from Hannah yet.

Hi Chara cool so Team Toothless! I would say the Nightfury is more like his title than his actual name.

Also sadly we’ll just have to mark Hannah as a no show. I did try contacting her but no response.
We’re still waiting for 2 people in our team but maybe they’ll turn up once we actually start.

Hi Captainsssss, I've shared the team spreadsheets with all members! If anyone says they're having any technical issues please let me know thanks😊

Kadi, I think that you accidently filled out my team's form for task 15.
Don't worry we'll keep the points😉

Oh no I’ve not touched it, but I can’t see any points showing Chara. Are you looking at the example of Challenge sheet instead? If so I just filled that in as an example and also to test that the points coding works

Oh! I guess that was it then

•Is there an official place to find a book's genre or is it usually obvious?
•15#74: Fighting censorship & possibly suffering consequences (i.e. Black rectangles / A.S. King) counts, right? For other audiences, this may include fatalities, but this audience tends not to have martyrs & vengeance unto death.
•13#64: Does this need to be an exact quote "Fool" or do synonyms (stupid, idiot, failure, unwise, gullible, etc.) count?
•Does 11#52 need to be a quote "good luck" or can something like "they wished luck" or "best wishes" count?
•7#31: Is apprentice an official role or can a mentorship-type relationship count?
•5#21: Does any pair of eyes (like on most characters on books) count or does it need to be more like Snoop / Gordon Korman? (I don't know how many editions there are, but one has a pair of eyes in the title word, big & super obvious)
•4#19: Does a bad relationship with both parents count? What if an orphan was raised in a orphanage & now has a bad relationship with them?
•4#17: What exactly is betrayed by best friend? Is it like when someone gets in trouble/bad situation because of their friend or does any kind of ditching count?
3#13 Do the generations need to be related? This means like kid, adult, elderly who are different people, right? Because I could interpret this several different ways. Maybe they're all 1 person or maybe there's 3 generations between ancestor/descendant or ...? One book I have in mind is Echo / Muñoz Ryan.
2#6 In previous years, I've worked hard to find books that have this task in the first few pages. Could you give more details what the parameters are?

Lots of good questions! I’ll answer them in order:

•Is there an official place to find a book's genre or is it usually obvious?
Maybe genres are listed on the publisher’s website. Also on the goodreads app you can see the genres people have shelved the book as at the bottom of the page, I think it’s also on the website as well but I’m not sure where on the book entry page you can see it for the website.

•15#74: Fighting censorship & possibly suffering consequences (i.e. Black rectangles / A.S. King) counts, right? For other audiences, this may include fatalities, but this audience tends not to have martyrs & vengeance unto death.
I don’t know that book but yes, that would count. The protagonist doesn’t have to suffer any consequences. It just has to be that there’s an injustice like someone being a bully and the proper channels such as a teacher or parents are useless so the protagonist decides to teach the bully a lesson themselves. That’s just an example, it’s the idea of the protagonist going above and beyond to put right something which they consider wrong even though there are official people (police, judges, etc) whose actual job it is to make sure the wrongs don’t happen

•13#64: Does this need to be an exact quote "Fool" or do synonyms (stupid, idiot, failure, unwise, gullible, etc.) count?
I thought it would be quite hard if it had to be the specific word fool, so no it doesn’t have to be for this task because there’s no quotation marks around the word fool.
All of the synonyms you’ve said would count too!

•Does 11#52 need to be a quote "good luck" or can something like "they wished luck" or "best wishes" count?
This task has quotation marks so it has to be the exact words good luck. It could be in a longer context like: “good luck to you” but the specific words “good luck” have to be there.

•7#31: Is apprentice an official role or can a mentorship-type relationship count?
Yes, it’s an official role as an apprentice. If the mentorship is an official role then it would count too. But if it’s unofficial like a father figure mentor type of character then that wouldn’t count.

•5#21: Does any pair of eyes (like on most characters on books) count or does it need to be more like Snoop / Gordon Korman? (I don't know how many editions there are, but one has a pair of eyes in the title word, big & super obvious)
Any pair of eyes counts! Can even be two black dots as eyes as long they are actually eyes lol. It doesn’t need to be in the title.

•4#19: Does a bad relationship with both parents count? What if an orphan was raised in an orphanage & now has a bad relationship with them?
Yes, a bad relationship with both parents would count.
No, the orphan thing would not count, it has to be with a parent

•4#17: What exactly is betrayed by best friend? Is it like when someone gets in trouble/bad situation because of their friend or does any kind of ditching count?
It could be any kind of betrayal, the graveness doesn’t matter. It’s basically like a protagonist trusted their best friend and then the best friend went against their trust. For example, the protagonist shared a secret with the best friend and then the best friend told everyone the secret. Or the protagonist and the best friend were working together to steal something from a villain and then the best friend made a deal with the villain to hand over the protagonist in exchange for money or something. So that’s two completely different levels of betrayal but it can be any kind of betrayal.

3#13 Do the generations need to be related? This means like kid, adult, elderly who are different people, right? Because I could interpret this several different ways. Maybe they're all 1 person or maybe there's 3 generations between ancestor/descendant or ...? One book I have in mind is Echo / Muñoz Ryan.
It has to be three different characters. No the generations don’t have to be related but it’s usually easier if they are, so you could have the protagonist (generation 1) and then their mum (generation 2) and grandmother (generation 3). You can substitute that with any other family relation, just think of it like a family tree if you get confused about who would be considered what generation

2#6 In previous years, I've worked hard to find books that have this task in the first few pages. Could you give more details what the parameters are?
I’ve been told my team this is a difficult one although I’m sure I’ve read a book like this in the past so they do exist!
It’s a cliche trope where an author uses the character looking in the mirror to describe the character, usually when they’re getting dressed for the day.
For this task it needs to be the protagonist, not just any character and the book has to start with that, like in the first chapter, like: “the sun hit my face and woke me up. I scrambled out of bed and looked in the mirror at my bloodshot eyes and crazy red hair standing up at all angles. Blah blah blah”
Like that😂

Hope that helped! Anymore questions, let me know!😊

Also sorry for the late reply, thanks for passing the questions on Chara😊

Alsoooo Captains I think I’ll share the scores spreadsheet next week maybe Wednesday so we’ve all had a good chance to settle into the Challenge mode👏🏻

3#63: Does it count if character stumbles and the item gets thrown in the river by accident? In case it matters, this is a skateboard that was being ridden on the street & it rolls full-speed into the river while character remains outside river

Hey Kadi, I noticed that my personal prompt was done without me getting to look at it or attempt it. I was also never asked if it could be completed by someone other then me.
If we have these personal ones again could we put that the person who has that number be asked first if your book could fit in that spot? Otherwise why do we have them if this is going to happen..it made me a bit upset about it.
Yes I know this is just a book reading thing and I'm prob just whining about nothing but still.

Hey Aeriell you can just swap it to another task. I’m sure whatever book is in your personal task right now fits another task. Just move it to another one and then you can do your personal task😊

That’s what we did in our team btw. I told my team not to do the task claiming thing because it gives me a headache, just read whatever you like and list all the tasks it fits. One person read a book that fit someone else’s personal task so I put it in the personal task because we’d get 5 points and then that person whose personal task it was said they just finished a book that fit their personal task so I moved the book that was in that spot and instead we get 10 personal task points now!

Let me know if that works for you Aeriell. If it doesn’t fit another task you can just take it off for now because you’ll have 20 bonus tasks revealed at some point throughout the challenge so it could fit one of those instead

@Chara no a character stumbling doesn’t count. It needs to be an active choice to throw whatever the item is in.
If it accidentally rolls then I would say that doesn’t count. Dropping it in the water on purpose would count though!

Does this count?: 13#65 Protagonist is kind of morally grey because he refuses to believe rumours/accusations about his dad's actions until the last 5% of the book?

10#46 Does it have to be rain or can it be water from a sprinkler/bucket/pool/etc.? What about snow? What about some other liquid?

Hi Chara first question is hmm yes that would count.
Second question no bucket, pool, sprinkler wouldn’t count. Snow would count technically but no other liquid would count. I guess also hailstone or sleet would count then

How much of the book needs to be set in the desert versus other locations in order for 10#50 to count? People travel a lot in Artemis books

If the protagonist thinks “good luck” at a specific person, but doesn’t say it (there was a riot on!) does that count?

What counts as fainting? Is it only the natural reflex or does it count being knocked unconscious/tranquilised/“falling asleep” unwillingly?

Hey Chara, here are the answers:
- At least 50% of the book has to be set in the desert
- Yes, thinking it would count
- No, it has to be fainting. It can be fainting for any reason like from the sight of blood, a reaction to medicine or needles, stress or anxiety, hunger, weakness, tiredness, etc.

Is there a difference between “scene beside waterfall” & “scene including waterfall”? At the end of Frozen II, Arendelle is restored & the waterfalls is flowing again

Does book told from the perspective of an animal have to be a novel where the pov is all that animal character or does a graphic novel where main character is animal count even though it shows other characters pov briefly? Over thinking it maybe.

@Charahere are the answers:
It has to be a scene in the vicinity of a waterfall so that he waterfall is a prominent feature of the scene. It sounds like they just mention waterfalls there so that example wouldn’t count.

Yes the whole book or graphic novel etc has to be told from the perspective of the animal, other POVs are fine as long as they are also animals

Hey Captains please fill in the reasons for the new books read on your team’s spreadsheet and then I can see if any are hidden Tripwire Tasks😊

Hey Captains, the teams spreadsheet can be found here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Feel free to share it with your team!

Hey Captains I just wanted to say that I’ve seen the discussion on your team page and I’m going to respond to it later but right now I have to get ready for work or I’m going to be late!

Hi Chara, Aeriell, Eden just to let you know that I’ve dropped a quick message (essay😂) on your team discussion page about task questions.

I appreciate the time you’re all taking to take part in the Challenge and be Captains. Any questions or anything please let me know or send a message to my email at kadithereader@gmail.com
Thankssss😊

Thank you for your essay Kadi

Also does an anecdote about a rabbit count for 1#3?

lol thanks Chara
Sadly no on the rabbit anecdote. It has to be a physical rabbit in the scene, it only has to be at least one scene to say there’s a rabbit in the book and then for the book to count!

If someone pays for something in "gold ingots", does this count for G#1? How narrow is the definition of "coin"?

@Chara ingots are like gold bars so that wouldn’t count. Gold coins or anything else coin-like would work (can’t think of anything coin-like right now lol)

I have a protagonist who is in a drama/theatre show, Annie, but I haven’t noticed her calling it a club/society. Does this count?

Protagonist takes part in high-stakes competition. Does a competition for power, rather than a sporting competition count?

What’s the context of the drama show? Is it a drama show in school? If so it would count.

Also yes to the other question, that counts.

If Protagonist has a favourite television show /channel/ that's real (Discovery channel) & he's memorised EVERY DOCUMENTARY & shares everything there is to know about oceans, shipwrecks, & ocean disaster survival, does that count for 16#80?

@Chara yes but they have to specifically include the name of the show in the book and that has to be a real show. The name of the channel is not enough, it has to be the name of the TV show itself.

Hey Captains! Your task 34 is missing the pages number, please fill it in for your pages points thanks😊

Hi Captains, I know previously I said 13th September was the end of the Challenge because it’s the weekend but I don’t know why I didn’t say 15th September as that’s the middle of the month. We’ll go with 15th September.

The Challenge ends at midnight on 15th September in your time zone!

Do the author and character need to share a first name or surname?

It can be either Chara! At least one name shared is enough for it to count for that bonus task

S#3: Would it count if Protagonist loses a painting of himself that he hates because someone buys it & is taking it to another state in U.S.A.? It was in a public gallery, so what he really lost was the shame of himself & other people looking at it

@Chara no it wouldn’t count because even though he technically lost something (the painting) he didn’t actually lose because it was a good thing for him as he hated the painting anyway. Technically he won!
And that task is about like the client having a goal or a fight or something and losing that so the protagonist comes out of the situation in a worse way that they were before

Does Amazon Best Book count as an award? Snoop / Gordon Korman

85: A book told from the perspective of an animal. The MC a human girl shapeshifts into an animal for the rest of the story. Does this count?

Does it count as a scene if the character gets on horse to ride on the last page? It says she gets on and they walk together I'm assuming its her and her friend riding horses together its one sentence at the end of book