RESULTS: Free Book Contest for Banned Book Week

Here are the results of my free book giveaway to commemorate Banned Book Week. The prize: a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth, a wonderfully readable book about the facts of evolution.

Bottom line first. I chose 2 co-winners: Traci C. of Zanesville, OH, and Michael P. of Everett, WA.

Traci’s submission really resonated with me, since it seemed clear that she has an open, inquiring mind, and I appreciate her attempt to make sense out of all this by homing in the facts of science.

Michael’s submission came from the standpoint of being a secondary school teacher and wanting to use the book as a resource for his students. My wife is a public school teacher, so the notion of helping to teach the facts of evolution to the next generation also resonated strongly with me.

I received a number of entries; frankly, more than I expected, but these two were clearly above the rest. I agonized about it all weekend, and went for a run over on Harshman Road to clear my head and to try to decide on one over the other. Suddenly it became crystal clear that both were equally deserving. So I am sending Traci my copy and I will order a new one from Amazon for Michael.

I really must thank Batocchio over at Vagabond Scholar for sending a lot of blog traffic my way.

As an aside, I spent at least an hour Sunday evening (after the Steeler game, of course!) trying to email Traci and Michael that they had won.  Seems that I could not get an email to go, I guess because it contained words like congratulations, winner, won, contest, prize, etc.  I can only assume that the spam filters were hard at work...too hard, it seems. 

So to Traci and Michael--CONGRATULATIONS!  Well done.  To the rest of you who submitted entries--thank you for your interest, and good luck next year when hopefully I will try this again.