Burbank Library is back at it again with its Trivia Challenge fundraiser
The Burbank Library’s annual Trivia Challenge fundraiser was once one of the most popular community events in the city and literacy librarian Jennifer Dance is looking to continue its legacy.
This year’s event will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Ritz Banquet Hall in St. Leon’s Cathedral, 3325 N. Glenoaks Blvd., to raise money for the library’s literacy program, which provides free one-on-one tutoring for adults 18 years old and older who read or write below an eighth-grade level.
The event is open to the public. Tickets are available for $30 at the door.
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Those in attendance will get to watch 12 teams made up of representatives from local businesses and philanthropic groups — Disney, Warner Bros. and the Rotary Club, to name a few — duke it out mentally to see who knows more than the other.
Dance, who took over the event in 2014 and is in charge of coming up with the trivia questions, said she wanted to ask the teams who produced the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls until 1989.
“I had ColecoVision and Cabbage Patch dolls when I was a kid, and I thought we should include that question, but I found out that [the trivia] is not all about me,” Dance said, laughing. “I took that question out because, just because I know the answer to that question, doesn’t mean anyone else is going to know the answer.”
The popularity of the event, hosted by the Friends of the Burbank Public Library, stumbled in 2013 when organizers decided to change the competition’s format from a trivia contest to a spelling bee.
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“Nobody wanted to go and do that,” Dance said. “It was a little bit of a flop.”
So, in 2014, Dance brought the Trivia Challenge back and raised about $4,000.
However, the competition was held in the fall that year rather that the spring, when it usually was held, to coincide with the California library system celebrating its 30th anniversary of library literacy.
Aware of the other community fundraisers during the fall, Dance opted to move the event back to the spring, but canceled the 2015 competition because she did not want to ask for money from the community twice within a short amount of time.
“But now, we’re back at it,” she said.
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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
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