The Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl encourages children to read books from the Georgia Children's Book Awards list and to talk about those books. Three public schools in Athens recently took top honors at the regional Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl.

Clarke Middle School and Hilsman Middle School share 1st place in the middle school division. Clarke Central High School won 1st place for the high school division.

All three teams will advance to Division II Championships on Feb. 23. Only two teams at each elementary, middle or high level advance, and CCSD has half of the teams!

The Reading Bowl is a quiz show-style competition in which teams of 5 to 10 students in grades 4-12 answer questions on the 20 Georgia Book Award books (elementary/middle) or 20 Georgia Peach Award books (high).

The winning teams are below:

Clarke Central High School
Jamie Coreas
Claire Dunn-Grandpre
Faith Farber
Mariah Isbell
Tomas Jimenez
Evan Newman
Shimobi Obijuru
Sara Tonks
Ami Wagne
Kacy Tedder, Coach 

Clarke Middle School
Danielle Rebecca Barker
Anessa Conine-Nakano
Johanna Hall
Katy Mayfield
Zach Meyers
Makayla Moore
Warren Rogers
Grace Rollins
Avery Warner
Nathan Wenger
Shawn Hinger, Coach

Hilsman Middle School

Linsey Chen
Lauren Chen
Brett Fraysher
Alex Hobbs
Zach Holland
Owen Schmidt
Charlie Ye
Leslie Gonzalez, Coach