Extra Credit Book Review

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If you would like to earn extra credit this trimester, you can write a book review for E-Zine!  This is NOT a book report.  It is a review of a book you read and enjoyed.  The review should convince other students to read this book.  Please follow the format below and make sure your review is typed.  The benefits of doing this extra credit (besides boosting your LA grade) is that you will get to see your review published in E-Zine and hopefully, it will encourage other students to read your book. 

Paragraph #1:  (8 – 10 sentences)  This paragraph should get the attention of the reader by focusing on the most interesting parts of the book (without giving away too much information).  You’ll want to provide your reader with some basic information: protagonist, conflict, setting, and some interesting/exciting plot twists.  End the paragraph with a cliffhanger question.  This is whether or not the protagonist will be able to overcome his/her conflict or will he or she be unsuccessful.  Do NOT include your opinion of the book or why you liked it in this paragraph.  That’s for paragraph #2.

Paragraph #2:  (8-10 sentences)  This paragraph is where you explain why you liked the book so much.  Was it the author’s descriptions?  Was it the protagonist?  Was the conflict exciting?  Could you relate to the story?  Include a direct quote from the book and explain why you picked that part. 

Book review introductions:

Start your book review with one of the following leads to get the reader’s attention.

*Imagine this:  (describe an exciting part of the book)

*What if  (describe what it would be like to be the protagonist facing the conflict)

*Pick and interesting direct quote from the story and explain how it relates to the book.

*Open with an interesting question that relates to the main idea:  Have you ever wondered . . .

*Pick a word that relates to the theme:  loyalty, loss, friendship, etc and write the definition of the word.  If the book title is one word, you could consider defining that word as your lead.  Webster’s dictionary defines the word  . . .  as . . .

Your book review will count as a quiz grade and is expected to include correct mechanics.