BookReviews

I have a lot of books, so sometimes I have the same problem as when I'm at a library: I don't know which book to read next.

Do you ever have this problem? I know it's worse when you're a kid, because sometimes, maybe even every day, you are told you have to read something, and you don't think there's anything you want to read. You might have access to hundreds of books, and there's probably at least ten or twenty that might be interesting in there somewhere... but you don't have time find them before a teacher starts nagging at you to just hurry up and find something.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Did you ever have to write a "book report?" Well, there's something much better, called a book review. A book review gives you a little bit of information about what happens in the book, but it also tells you if the person who wrote the book review liked the book, and why. Reading book reviews can seriously help you decide if you'd be interested in reading the book or not. Best of all, if you're supposed to be reading, and you haven't decided on a book yet, the teacher can see that you're reading the book review, and that's reading, right?

Now, on the back cover of a book (or sometimes on the inside flap), you'll usually find what I would call a fake book review. The thing about it that's not fake is that it really is a summary of what the book is about. The thing about it that is fake is that always makes the book sound interesting. Why always? Because it was written by someone working for the book's publisher. Of course, someone working for the book's publisher has to make it sound interesting, or they would get fired, because the book's publisher wants the book's sales to increase.

The more important problem with fake book reviews, if you're a kid, is that you're probably more interested in reading what other kids think of a book than what an adult thinks of it, because kids and adults are often interested in different sorts of things. Now, I don't mean to tell you that you should never look at the summary that's included with a book; a lot of times, it is a quick way to decide if you should start reading the first few pages. My point is that a book review, written by another kid, and especially if it's written by someone you know, can help you decide whether a book might be interesting much more quickly.

So, to help ourselves become a community of readers who enjoy what they read, we're going to regularly write book reviews. Over time, you'll see who has similar reading interests, and be able to form book clubs.

I could tell you what reviewers normally include in a book review, but I think it will be easier for you to understand if I give you a couple of examples, and then name the features. I'm going to review one fiction book and one non-fiction book. Over time we'll come up with a system for organizing our book reviews, and then you'll have lots of examples to look at.