HOW HAD MRS. OLINSKI CHOSEN her sixth-grade Academic Bowl team? She had
a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really
chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a
good team?
It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinski's team won the
sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an
even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth
grade, too. And when they went on to even greater victories, everyone
began to ask: How did it happen?
It happened at least partly because Noah had been the best man (quite by
accident) at the wedding of Ethan's grandmother and Nadia's grandfather.
It happened because Nadia discovered that she could not let a lot of
baby turtles die. It happened when Ethan could not let Julian face
disaster alone. And it happened because Julian valued something
important in himself and saw in the other three something he also
valued.
Mrs. Olinski, returning to teaching after having been injured in an
automobile accident, found that her Academic Bowl team became her answer
to finding confidence and success. What she did not know, at least at
first, was that her team knew more than she did the answer to why they
had been chosen.
This is a tale about a team, a class, a school, a series of contests
and, set in the midst of this, four jewel-like short stories -- one for
each of the team members -- that ask questions and demonstrate
surprising answers.