Monday, April 21, 2025
March Book Madness came to a climactic conclusion at Park Avenue Elementary School in the North Bellmore School District, where hundreds of students voted “Magic Ramen: The Story of Momofuku Ando” by Andrea Wang as the best book of the school year on April 2.
The bracket-style tournament began with 16 books, and each week, students would vote on which books would advance to the next round of the tournament until one was crowned the winner.
The tournament’s weekly results were put on display in the school lobby — an idea created by the school’s secretary, Christie Boschert. As students arrived each day, the first topic they talked about was the books’ rankings.
“It’s a place where students can go and see what book is in the lead and what’s winning,” Lynn Coyle, the principal of Park Avenue, told the Herald. “It’s gotten excitement in the building. It’s all good stuff, it all promotes learning and reading, and it’s all about engaging the kids.”
Two Ohio teachers, Tony Keefer and Scott Jones, hatched the idea for the book event, experimenting with using a bracket-style tournament in their classrooms in 2015. They began to promote the annual event to other educators with suggested reading lists for young students.
A pair of educators at Park Avenue Elementary School, Nicole Giusto and Yvonne Francolina, helped bring this new tradition to Merrick.
Giusto is a sixth grade teacher and an avid reader, sharing her passion with the next generation.
“My students know about my love of books,” she said.
March Book Madness proved to be a success, according to Giusto, whose students showed a deep level of engagement with the competition.
“It actually just made for such great conversation,” she said. “We didn’t put them in the order, but they would say, ‘Oh, we read these two books, I wonder why they paired these two?’”
Students compared and contrasted books based on word count, theme and plot. While only one book emerged victorious, every text served as a valuable lesson tool, Park Avenue educators said. One of the most important takeaways from the tournament was the students’ ability to disagree with civility and think critically about their opinions.
In addition to March Book Madness, Giusto keeps the energy high year round.
“We also do First Chapter Friday, where I read the first chapter of a book to them every Friday, just to keep introducing new books over and over,” she said.
These regular reading programs play an important role in maintaining reading habits while young people continue to grow.
“I teach sixth graders,” Giusto said, “they’re older, they have a lot going on in their lives, and reading tends to be the thing that gets pushed to the side most often.
“For me to make time to enjoy reading books during their day is important because they go home, they have sports, they have religion, they have homework, they have all these other things that they have to do,” she explained. “This gives them the chance to just remember they love reading.”
This marks the first year Park Avenue has put a plan like this into action. Some classes alternated between audiobooks and read-aloud methods worked into their usual daily class routines.
Francolina is the district’s library media specialist, helping to provide books to elementary schools in Merrick.
“For some of my classes, I have shown them some of the books and, I think, maybe this will even grow into other schools within the district,” she said.
Two books — the winner of the competition and “The Boy Who Said Wow” by Todd Boss — were two of Francolina’s favorites in the competition, introducing students to cultural and culinary history, as well as autism awareness.
As an educator, Francolina’s goal is to create enthusiastic readers, problem solvers and critical thinkers.
“I think exposing them to these books does all of those things,” she said. “They get so excited, especially when they are making those personal connections, or see themselves reflected in a book and learn about things that they didn’t even know existed.”
Practicing what they preach, Park Avenue staff members participate in their own book club.
“We’re reading ‘The Energy Bus’ by Jon Gordon,” Coyle said. “It’s really great to talk about the 10 rules of life, and it applies not only professionally, but personally.”
