Book Reviews

Today we looked at some book reviews.  I had found four book reviews that I really liked.  All the book reviews were about different books.  You can find these book reviews in the writer's notebook.  I asked the class to tell me what they noticed about the book reviews.  I thought both classes did an amazing job of noticing what the authors had done to create their review.

We made a poster of what the class noticed about reviews.  Here is the poster we made:

1. The book reviews had a hook to catch the reader's attention.
2. The book review shared the title and author of the book.  This was done after the hook and then a few of the authors repeated the title at the end of the review.
3. The book review told you a bit about the book.  The review made the book sound exciting but did not spoil the book.
4. The book review made a challenge to read the book or ended with a cliffhanger.
5. We also noticed some extra things in just a few of the book reviews.  Many of the book reviews used questions.  We also saw a few of the book reviews talk about the genre of the book

We are going to use this list to help us write our first book review about The One and Only Ivan.  

I love this idea of looking at mentor texts to help us learn about different types of writing.  When I am learning about anything, I like to consult an expert.  I do not know how many videos I have watched about fixing things around my house.  I do not consider this cheating...I consider it learning.  Unfortunately I think some students think it might be cheating to look at other writers to find ideas.  I want to change that perception.  As we write these book reviews I am hoping that the students see how we use mentor texts to help make our writing stronger.