Book Report

Book reports are a stand-by teaching method in middle school and high school.  Reading is important to any education program, and book reports, when handled correctly, show educators that students are reading books and, more importantly, the students are comprehending what they’re reading.  Of course, this teaching technique doesn’t always work flawlessly; every teacher can tell you that he or she has read more than one book report which was obviously written from the book jacket of the assigned book.  Though I’m not going to write your book report for you, I should be able to help you write a good one, even if you haven’t quite had time to read the entire book.  Though reading is important and should never be downplayed, sometimes it’s tough to finish the book that’s been assigned.  Maybe homework is piling up, or you forgot about the assignment, or you plain just didn’t want to do it.  Whatever the case, the book report still needs to be written.

When teachers read and grade book reports they are looking for evidence that you did, in fact, read the entire book that was assigned to you.  Depending on the grade level and the particular teacher, he or she is probably also looking for some evidence that you comprehended the events which transpired in the book.  This part is important, as it shows that you’ve gone beyond the words on the page.

Some rules are good to follow, whether or not you read the entire book.  Be specific.  Use character names and demonstrate that you know the relationships between them.  Refer to specific parts of the book instead of the work as a whole.  Also, talk about either how the book made you feel or what it made you think about.  Perhaps offer up a similar situation that happened in your own life that parallels a situation in the book.  Show that you understand the characters in the book and what they’re going through.

So how do you do all of this if you’ve read only part of the book, or none at all?  First find a summary of the book and read that to get a general idea of the storyline, paying attention to key characters and events.  It helps to read a few online summaries if you can, since it helps you avoid complete plagiarism, since if you cut and paste text from websites you’re going to get caught.  Get an idea of the story and then put it into your own words, and use that, along with a few quotes pulled from the book, to construct your book report.