Collegiate Times

“The Missing Piece” and “Grapes of Wrath” were entries in different categories in the University of Illinois’ edible book contest in 2011. (COURTESY OF BEA NETTLES & UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY)

Virginia Tech will take bite out of books as it holds its Edible Book Contest. 

Contestants make books out of food, and can enter in categories for best young adult/children’s, best fiction, best non-fiction, punny-est, most artistic and best overall.

The universally known contest is usually held near April Fool’s Day in remembrance of the humorous time of year.

“It’s really just a fun event, completely light hearted, completely silly,” said Rebecca Miller, a librarian at Newman Library. “I think it humanizes the library a little bit — that’s one of the reasons we wanted to do this.”

In addition to the light heartedness, it allows the Tech community to show off its imaginative side.

“It’s really a creative way to think about books,” Miller said. “What you really see is a lot of is people being creative with plays on words and really showing off their artistic skills with food. That is what I enjoyed seeing the most this summer.”

Anyone in the Tech community can vote or be a contestant.

“We just want to encourage people to come out and see what’s going on,” said Kara Dietz, processing and acquisitions archivist. “We’re really hoping that this is going to be an annual event.”

Dietz said there has been a variety of people who have expressed interest, from liberal arts students to engineering majors. 

A former contestant from the summer has already been concocting ideas for the contest.

“(I’m) probably going to base my entries on puns,” said Scott Fralin, who works at the library. “I like to bake already. It’s really just taking that kind of stuff to the next step and taking a lot more time and catering to it.

Miller said the staff began planning in July and came together to do a pilot program to see if the contest would be successful.

“It was a huge hit,” Miller said of the pilot program. “Everyone had a really great time.”

After the pilot program, contestants realized something had to be done to implement a traditional Edible Book Contest at Tech.

“We started doing some Google searches and seeing what else was out there,” Miller said. “Of course, all of the other contests that had gone before had put up pictures online. We just wanted to be able to have that opportunity here right on campus.”

Other schools that have had similar edible book contests are Duke University, Michigan State University and University of Illinois.

The event depends on attendance. 

“We want people to come because we want people to vote,” Dietz said. “We are not doing judges, so all the awards that are going to go out are based entirely on people showing up and voting.”

The event will be held Friday in Torgersen Hall Room 1100 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 27 issue of the Collegiate Times.