The Gateway Challenge is comprised of 15 books read and voted on by students to find the winner of the 2011-2012 Gateway Readers Award.

“Throughout the Rockwood school district, Marquette has the most ballots submitted each year for the Gateway Challenge,” Lee Mitchell, head librarian and Gateway Committee member said. “Each school has around 100 ballots submitted and we always exceed that.”

Mitchell is on the Gateway Committee at the state level and helps read and pick which books will be on the awards list in the upcoming years.

“Right now we are reading books for the 2013-2014 school year,” Mitchell said. “This way they will all be in paperback and therefore more accessible to students when the list comes out. We start the process by reading 65 books by a certain deadline and narrowing that down to 25 and then eventually to the top 15 that is published.”

Last year MHS had 131 votes submitted, Mitchell said.

“I hope to exceed that number even more this year,” Mitchell said.

Students such as Rennie Svirnovskiy, freshman, are trying to increase the number of votes.

“I have read almost all of them,” Svirnovskiy said. “There are only four I haven’t read yet, and I plan on trying to get one more in before the voting starts.”

Some tenth grade language arts teachers are finding ways to work the Gateway nominees into their lesson plans, so their students have a chance to vote or get a head start on reading.

“I have not read any of the nominees in my language classes, but I know people who had to,” Svirnovskiy said. “I like all the different stories and I think books awards are an interesting idea, so I like to participate. My favorite this year was ‘Flash Burnout,’ so I will most likely be voting for that one.”

To be eligible to vote, participants must read three of the 15 gateway challenge books. Voting started March 1 and continues through March 10. Ballots are available in the Library or with language arts teachers.