It was Monday. Monday 23rd of March, 2017. We squished into the back of Miss Just’s little Volkswagen, excitedly chattering about the event ahead of us. The Kids Lit Quiz, 2017, which was going to be at Cobham Intermediate this year, as per usual. 

We walked into the hall, and met up with the other group of 4, who’d travelled with Mr Terris. We met up with Nikki at our table, and sat down to look through the categories we had for today. Pigs, Portals, Powers, Transformations, Music… about the randomest group of things you could think of. And about half of them started with P. We picked our double-up category- (Pigs) and handed in the slip of paper, then replaced our missing teammate with the one bag we’d been allowed to bring. Introductions were made, speeches prepared and then finally we started. 

First category? Music. Wayne, the man who goes all over the world to find a Lit Quiz winner, went over to a stereo and selected a song. Our group looked at each other, slightly confused. Huddled together, our heads almost touching in the middle, the first song played. Confused looks spread across the room, until Nikki (and some others) got the answer, marked with a little squeal. The Grinch. The next songs we guess based on some hinty words, like ‘Quasimodo’ for the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and ‘Wuthering Heights’ in the Wuthering Heights one. We score 8 out of 10 and wished we had doubled up on this category. But it didn’t matter. We did our team handshake and watched the next categories fly past in a blur. The parents got chances to win Whitcoulls vouchers and the kids could win spot prizes of stationary packs and five dollar notes. We didn’t win any. 

Our hardest categories came near the end. Saints, Ships and Non-Fiction were our worst categories, with scores like 4 or 5 out of 10, other teams winning the categories with 8’s or 9’s. There was a quick morning tea break and then we were back to it again, guessing names like Dunn O’Brah or actually knowing things like the name of a firework named after a Saint. And eventually, we stopped. 10 categories had been asked. 10 categories had been answered. Now it was time to get the results and find out who was going to Nationals from the second biggest heat in the World in 2017. The suspense was built up and we listened while the markers tallied up our final scores. And the winners were….Cashmere Primary, Team 1, with Cobham Intermediate Team 1 coming in 2nd. They would be going to Nationals, and the winner of that, heading to Internationals in Canada. 

Our team came in at a solid 9th out of 72, the top ⅛, which was an awesome result given one of our team members was away sick so there were only three of us. The other team placed 34th so they came in the top half, a great score for both teams. Then we came back to school, slightly late for tech.

By Isobel and Gabby, Room 15