Discussion Topic
Understanding the Concept and Example of a Book Review
Summary:
A book review is a critical evaluation of a book, summarizing its content, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, and often providing a recommendation. It typically includes an overview of the book's themes, characters, and plot, along with the reviewer's personal insights and opinions. An example would be a review of To Kill a Mockingbird, highlighting its exploration of racial injustice and moral growth.
What is a "book review" and can you provide an example?
The exact meaning of a “book review” may differ based on the level of audience for which it is written. A middle school book review will probably look a little different from a book review that a university professor would write, but even so, there are sure to be some commonalities. The general structure of a book review is the following:
1) A rich description of the book: What are the contents? How are the chapters broken up and arranged? What methods and what types of sources are used (if it’s research-type book)? What does the book set out to do? and so on. This section would not replace an actual reading of the book, but it would give the reader of the book review a clear sense of whether or not the book would interest them.
2) A developed evaluative statement about the book (maybe at least 1/3 as long...
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as the first section): How does this book fit within or work against a tradition or trend? How compelling is the writing (especially if it is a creative work) or the argument (especially if it is a critical work)? Does the book succeed in doing what it set out to do? and so on.
The link http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/bookrev/read.htm given below gives example of perhaps a middle-school-level book review. See other sections of this site (e.g. “Writing Tips”) for more information, if this example matches what you are looking for. Don't necessarily stop here, though!
A second link leads to a pdf file with good advice on writing academic book reviews:
http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/siteart/jli_bookreviewguidelines.pdf
Enotes has some very useful information, too, of course: http://www.enotes.com/topic/Book_review
I hope that these comments help!
What is a book review?
A book review, when written by a professional, is intended to assess the quality of a work of literature, and may include technical as well as stylistic assessments. For example, a reviewer may observe that a writer fails to develop a certain character sufficiently for their story, or that they use plot devices that are predictable.
Educators who assign book reviews to students generally do so to get them to critically read a work of literature. A typical book review of any sort usually involves a brief summary or synopsis of the material in the book. Often a reviewer would analyze the content to determine the themes an author is interested in working through, and to discuss the characters in the book.
This analysis would be followed by the types of assessment or evaluation mentioned above. How well were the characters developed? How effective was the author in bringing the themes to light? Finally, some book reviews use other, similar works to use as a reference point for a work of literature. This could be other works by the same author, or different books that engage with similar themes.