Most students know (or think they know) what book reviews are, so once again, we focused on WHY and HOW we read and write book reviews.
For the WHY, we discussed the following quote:
"THE ACT OF READING LIES IN TALKING ABOUT WHAT WE READ… WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE THINK ABOUT A BOOK UNTIL WE’VE TALKED ABOUT IT."
-TELL ME (CHAMBERS, P.7)
Thus, it is in communicating our thoughts and feelings that we fully come to an understanding of what we think. They kids' minds were blown, but they loved it!
I had them spend some time on goodreads.com, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com perusing book reviews and brainstorming through a cluster chart what should be included (and not included) in a good book review. Here is what we came up with:
Utilizing the following websites, I had my students explore YA book bloggers seeking answers to the following questions:
- What cool information did you find?
- Did something the blogger said change your perspective on a book you have read? What and Why?
- Did something they said make you want to read a book? Or make you LESS interested in a book? Why?
- What did you learn from looking at comments?
- Do you think bloggers are biased? Do you trust the information they gave? WHY???
- Yabookblogdirectory.blogspot.com
- Bookends.booklistonline.com
- Greenbeanteenqueen.com
- Tweendom.blogspot.com
- Readingrants.org
- Theninjalibrarian.blogspot.com
- Yabooknerd.blogspot.com
- Persnicketysnark.com
Utilizing the following websites, I had my students compare and contrast professional book reviews with book review bloggers (using the Padlet site from before) using a venn diagram.
- https://www.kirkusreviews.com/
- http://www.slj.com/
- http://publishersweekly.com/
- http://www.ala.org/offices/publishing/booklist
Now, my students can write their own book reviews on the books they are reading throughout the semester.