Kids' Lit Quiz
The Kids' Lit Quiz is a team-based literature competition for students aged 10-14, founded and continuously operated by New Zealand-based literacy advocate Wayne Mills.[1]
The distribution of the Kids' Lit Quiz varies by year, but categories generally include literary subjects like Folktales, Authors, Titles, Love Stories, and Cryptids.
Quizbowl-like Qualities
The Kids' Lit Quiz World Final, an international event attended by the champions of various Anglophone countries' National Finals, prides itself on ostensibly pyramidal questions, answered via buzzer. Adjudicator Celeste Harrington explains their approach as such: "often, [our questions] begin very obscurely and move to the more obvious." [2]
A sample of tournament play can be found at Insight Media's YouTube recording of the Kids' Lit Quiz World Final.[3]
Sample Questions
The following questions are from the 2008 Kids' Lit Quiz World Final, and remain sample questions on the competition's website.[4]
1. Name the hero of this American folktale first published in 1909. It told of the heroic feat of a railway engineer who gave his life in a train crash to save his passengers and crew. As the engineer on the Cannonball Express he found that his train was careering into two freight trains. His body was later found in the wreckage with one hand on the brake lever. If he hadn't stayed in the engine to jam on the breaks, the crash would have been much worse. He was the only person killed. His name was...
ANSWER: Casey Jones
2. This very popular Victorian author was born in 1812, and died in 1870. Children first read his novels in sections as soon as they were published. He paid meticulous attention to detail. He cared greatly for justice and his characterisations of cruel people and of senseless bureaucracy had a huge influence in society. He could move the hearts and minds of those who had previously been indifferent to cruelty and stupidity. His first novel was The Pickwick Papers in 1837. Two of his more popular novels were Great Expectations, written in 1861, and Oliver Twist. His name is...
ANSWER: Charles Dickens
3. This book was first published in 1985. It was made into a feature film starring Helen Mirren and Paul Scofield. It tells the story of two children, Daniel Pender and Gracie Jenkins, who live on the Isles of Scilly off the southwestern tip of England. They made friends with the despised and feared Birdman, the lone survivor from the island of Samson. The Birdman was determined to save the island from the fate that had befallen Samson. He intended doing this by preventing the narwhals, a type of whale with a spiral horn, from stranding. The author was Michael Morpurgo and the title was...
ANSWER: Why the Whales Came
Trivia
American schools have won the Kids' Lit Quiz twice. Churchill Road Elementary School (McLean, Virginia) became the first American champion in 2019, an achievement seconded by King Philip Middle School (West Hartford, Connecticut) when they became the most recent Kids' Lit Quiz world champion in 2026.
It is unknown if any Kids' Lit Quiz participants have gone on to play academic quizbowl.