Authentic Writing Experience for November - Writing Book Reviews

The November Authentic Writing Experience is all about book reviews. Creating book reviews is a great way to work on summary and essay writing, but reviews are so much more than just an old-fashioned book report. They have a real-life purpose. A book review is designed to share impressions and opinions of books with our friends and to get suggestions of books we might like from them. Many adults join book clubs to talk about books. Some prefer movies and enjoy writing reviews for films on sites like Rotten Tomatoes. They also get ideas for movies they might enjoy by reading other people's reviews.

When I worked with high school students on the autism spectrum, we had an after-school movie club. We watched movies, talked about movies, and students wrote movie reviews. Then they filmed each other, giving Siskel and Ebert-style film reviews. The Twilight movie came out around that time, and they even wrote a spoof of the story, acted it out, and filmed it.

While researching my new Edgar Allan Poe book, The Raven Remix, I was surprised to discover that in addition to being a famous poet and short story writer, Poe was also a magazine editor and literary critic. Poe was the first writer to try to make a living solely by his literary efforts, but it was very hard. He lived much of his life in poverty. He received nine dollars for his poem "The Raven" which was not much money even in his time. 

To help support himself and his family, Poe wrote hundreds of essays, book reviews, and articles that were published in newspapers and magazines. He proposed setting specific standards to judge the merits of literary works. Whenever he critiqued a particular work, he made a detailed technical analysis and often pointed out grammar errors and illogical reasoning. The general public loved his reviews, which were often witty and clever, but the authors he critiqued were not always fans, especially when his remarks were unfavorable. Some of the contemporary authors he reviewed were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Fenimore Cooper.

I don't suggest harshly criticizing your peers, as Poe often did. He lost a lot of friends that way, but writing a book review can be helpful to others who may be interested in reading similar genres. 

Here are some tips to share with young people for writing book reviews:
 
1. Write a one-paragraph summary of the story, but don't give away the ending. Include the title of the book and the author.
2. Write one paragraph describing what you liked or disliked about the book and why others may or may not want to read it. Compare it to similar books that people may know about.
3. Write a conclusion and give the book a 1-5 star rating.

My new decodable book The Raven Remix: A Mashup of Poe Titles is now available on Ingram, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can also order it from your favorite local bookstore.

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