Battle of the Books

Welcome to the official site for ACLD Battle of the Books—March Madness edition!  For the 2025 voting period, staff have selected sixteen popular YA titles that will be voted on by you, bracket by bracket, eliminating half each week until we get to our winners.

Here’s how it works: The sixteen books have been paired off into eight pairs, as seen in the image above.  You vote for your preferred title of that pair.  You can vote for all eight pairs (you can also submit your vote without voting for everything).  This is all about your preference; you choose what you want to read this summer.  After the first round of voting ends, the sixteen titles will be reduced to eight titles (broken into four pairs) and we’re off to Round 2.  Vote every time!  The best way to help your favorite win is by voting every week.

The timeline goes:

• March 19-24: Round 1 (Vote for your favorite 8!)
• March 26-31: Round 2 (Vote for your favorite 4!)
• April 2-7:  Round 3 (Vote for your favorite 2!)

Voting for Round Two will be done through this form.

You, the voter, will choose two of the three titles for this summer’s competition.  On April 9, we will announce the winners and our Wild Card pick. The Wild Card pick was selected to showcase the work of the author who will join us before the battle.  Check this site weekly for fun hints about our wild card title.  As a reminder, teens in Alachua County can sign up to be part of a team in this summer’s ultimate literary trivia competition.  The first 50 teens who enter will receive a copy of the three books to keep.

The books under consideration, their summaries, and their link to our library catalog are all listed below.  For any questions, please contact us at ysref@aclib.us.

Thank you again, and it’s time to get mad!

And also, a big thank you to the Friends of the Library for their generous contributions that helped to fund this program.

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys.  (historical fiction). In a country governed by isolation, fear, and a tyrannical dictator, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer, but he decides to use his position to try to outwit his handler, undermine the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country.

One night, Lacey comes across the broken form of a highly advanced baku. After she repairs it, the cat-shaped baku she calls Jinx opens its eyes and somehow gets her into her dream school. But Jinx is different than any other baku she's ever seen...He seems real.

Run (Book One) by John Lewis.  (graphic novel; historical). For John Lewis, the Civil Rights Movement as he knew it ended with the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, but his struggle in the following years echo many of the same questions of civil rights and equality that are being asked today. The movement secured the right to sit at a lunch counter, but what about the right to earn a dollar to pay for your meal? Ousted from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee due to internal disorder, Lewis went on to work on Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, to be shocked by the events of 1968. Struggling with the larger question of how to rebuild the movement, Lewis had an idea: someone should run for the 5th Congressional district seat in Georgia. Starting with the tragic death of Martin Luther King Jr., Run tells the story of how John Lewis entered politics, working within the community, and organizing a campaign that has taken him to one of the most important seats in Congress.