We competed against Toronto’s best and brightest young readers and we didn’t lose.  Oh sure, you think authors should score high on a quiz about books.  What about a quiz on cartoons, cats, finance, flowers, prisons and prisoners, body parts, and beasts in books?  

My fellow authors on the Write Stuff team, Bill Swan (Fourteen and Sentenced to Death: The Story of Steven Truscott), Wesley King (The Vindico) and Michael Betcherman (Breakaway) felt the same as I,  as much as we love reading and writing, we’re fairly self absorbed and have no great retention for titles, characters and details in other peoples’ books.

We thought we would be scalded.

But we came in third(ish) in a regional heat–we were tie with another team. We should have boned up on our Harry Potter trivia. I did not know the name of Harry’s Aunt, she was in the flower category, hint, hint. I’l confess too I had difficulty understanding the KLQ creator and host, Wayne Mills, from New Zealand. What is the name of the Amazonian super hero?  The word Amazonian in Aussie speak had many of us baffled.  Answer:  Wonder Woman.

To what do we owe our supreme not-failure: brilliant teamwork and good qualified guessing.  

I know you probably want to know the winner.  Here’s where self absorption and bad memory come into play.  Let me just say that all the kids were winners because they love books so much.