Teen Book Review Contest Tip #2

I hope you are all reading, writing, and trying to come up with the best book reviews. I can't wait to start reading your book reviews (and the prizes for this contest are going to be awesome). So without further ado:

Tip #2: A Book Review is NOT a Book Report

So for school you might have to write book reports, you know where your teacher wants to tell you everything about a book. This is great for school; you show your teachers what you learned about the book. For a book review, you want to convince someone else to read the book. When Megan or I write book reviews for the blog, we want to get someone to read the book, so we tell you a little about the book to get you interested (or enough for you to decide you are not interested).

For a book review, you just need to tell us enough about the story to make us want to read the book. You won't want to give away surprise endings (this makes writing about sequels or series books difficult- can you write about book 2 or 3 without giving away what happened in book1?) and you don't want to make it so I don't need to read the book by telling me everything that happens.

One thing you can do is check out reviews on Amazon or other book reviewing websites (hint: our blog). Read the reviews and ask questions like "Is this helpful?" "Do I want to read the book based on this review?" and "Do I need to read the book after reading this review?". Side tip, be careful when reading reviews that you don't copy what someone else wrote. That is plagiarism, and will get you disqualified from the contest.

That's it for now. I'll have more tips on writing the actual review soon, and don't forget the writing workshop on October 20th at 7PM. I'll have more tips and time to read and share with other teens.

I'll see you @ the library!
Katie (Reading Going Bovine, finally!)