Jump, pass, shoot, score, page turn? As the March Madness basketball tournament was underway throughout the country, March book madness was also underway in the hallways of BSM. 

March Book Madness is a bracket-style tournament with 16 books chosen by librarian Ms. Sylvester. Students vote on books they have read both in school and popular books among students around the US. “So the books on the left are from classes. Typically students in 9th or 10th grade read these, and the books on the right are either book that are popular, so frequently checked out here, or they’re popular nationwide or award-winning books,” Sylvester said. 

These books then go through a voting process, similar to the way people fill out their brackets in March Madness. Students vote differently, but some have a process of choosing what book they want to advance along in the tournament. “First, I ask myself, have I read the book? If I have read the book and liked it, that’s probably going to be the one I vote for. If I haven’t, I’ll ask people if they’ve read the books which one they like better, then decide based on their input,” freshman Charlotte Feller said. 

Each year there are a different group of books that Ms. Sylvester compiles. When narrowing down the book selection, Sylvester tries to incorporate and include all genres. “Students like so many books so I try to put a good representation of different genres in the bracket,” Sylvester said. 

There are many reasons that students take part in the tournament, some may be doing it in class as an in-class activity, others do it just for fun and others do it to broaden their reading horizons. “It usually gives me more book recommendations. If I haven’t read some of the books there. Then I’ll add them to my to-read list,” Feller said 

As March Madness has grown to a spectacle in today’s society, people in the BSM community think that march book madness will grow as well; it just needs to be advertised more. “I think people just need to be told more about it. Because I know like half the people in the school probably don’t know that it exists,” Feller said 

Ultimately March Book Madness is supposed to let people explore different books and find books that interest them. “The goal is just to introduce them to titles and books that are well reviewed and things they haven’t seen before. And hopefully, you would be interested in reading,” Sylvester said.