Parts of a Book Report

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A book report is a basic literary assignment generally given to students in elementary

and middle school grades that is meant to exhibit their understanding of a text. Unlike
essays that focus on a specific aspect of the work, book reports offer summaries of plot,
themes and characters. While detailed requirements regarding what must be included in
a book report vary based on the instructor, all book reports tend to have a consistent
structure that provides basic information about the text and the reader's interpretation.

1. Introduction/Overview
o The first part of a book report is the introductory paragraph. In this section, the
reader includes information about the book's title, author, publication details and
a very brief overview of the plot. Pertinent information about the author's history
or life circumstance may also be mentioned in the introduction if it relates to plot
or messages of the book. A note regarding the book's popularity and circulation
can also be added into the introduction to provide a more robust context for the
story. The reader should also include a brief statement regarding their reactions
to the text or presence of any persistent themes.

Summary of the Text

o The paragraph following the introduction should be an overview of the book's
plot. This description will include information on the important characters, the
story's physical location and time period and the basic plot movements. It is also
important to include details pertaining to the narrator of the story or the point of
view from which the story is told. The overview of the book should not contain
opinions, analysis of themes or any other inferred information. If the book is a
nonfiction work, then a broad dissection of the book's purpose, argument and
conclusions will suffice.

Textual Analysis
o After a summary of the book has been established, the reader may proceed to
expound on any salient themes, symbols, analogies or exterior references found
in the text. Analysis on the author's overall purpose can also be included in this
section. When considering these points, the reader may include educated
opinions as to whether or not the author achieved their goals or successfully
carried themes by reference specific aspects of the text, such as language,
 grammatical use and character structure. Depending on the number of points the
reader wishes to examine, the analysis section may last for several paragraphs.

Personal Reaction
o Before concluding the book report, the reader may want to personally react to the
book. In this paragraph, the reader has the right to comment on the book's
qualities, themes and plot without needing to provide textual evidence.
Depending on the regulations of the instructor, this section may be written in the
first person or in the subjective third person. Some common points that may be
covered in the personal reaction section include whether the reader would
recommend the book to others or if they liked the book.

Conclusion
o All book reports should end with a short concluding paragraph that summarizes
the points made in the analytical and personal reaction sections. The concluding
paragraph should weave the objective and subjective opinions together to create
the ultimate judgment on the piece, the author's motivations or the actions of the
characters. The inclusion of a poignant quotation from the text is often inserted in
the concluding paragraph, as well.

How to write a Book Report

This concise guide to writing a book report written by PhD Professor Jacob Leland will help you
confidently and consistently write solid book reports. This guide provides you with an overview
of the requirements for content and structure as well as insight into the expectations of your
professors and the key points on which your book report will be assessed.

About the autor

Jacob Leland received his PhD in Literatures and Cultures in English from Brown University in
2006, and his BA from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Brown, UC
Berkeley, and Tulane University, and lives in New Orleans.
This guide will teach you how to:
 Explain, analyze, and evaluate the book your writing on.
 Write a spot on summary and analysis.
 Address the right target audience.
 Craft proper citations and bibliographies.
 Avoid plagiarism.

The guide also covers:

 The differences between college and high school book reports.
 How book reports differ from other assignments e.g. book reviews & essays.
 What background information to include in your book report.
What Is A Book Report?
A book report is usually a 500-word writing assignment. You should be sure to check with your
instructor about the required length. The report itself is just what its name implies: after reading a
book, you report back on what you have read. You will provide your reader with basic
information about the book, so that he or she may better understand the book and its topic before
reading it. You should inform your reader, as objectively as possible, about the book. A book
report is different from a book review, which will go beyond the basics to evaluate and make
more subjective claims about the text's quality. A book report is also different from an
argumentative essay, which advances an original thesis. Finally, although it may be part of a
sequence of assignments leading up to a research paper, which investigates a topic through a
variety of sources and takes a position within a set of claims about that topic, a book report is not
a research paper.

A book report, unlike any of these, is written by a reporter:

someone whose responsibility is to tell his or her reader what's going on. This means you need to
answer a reporter's questions: Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? The way to answer
those questions will vary depending on the type of book you've been assigned: whether it's
fiction or nonfiction, narrative or expository, and so on. A few things hold true over all these
categories, though, and understanding them will help you prepare to write your book report.
You'll need to identify the major plot, characters, thesis, and/or main idea, and trace for your
reader how the book you've chose or been assigned develops those things. In order to most
effectively address the basic questions a reporter needs to ask, let's examine the reason for
writing--and assigning--a book report.
Why Write A Book Report?
Of course, you are writing a book report because you have been given an assignment. The
purpose of the assignment, though, is somewhat different from that of book reports you may
have written before this point in your education. Until now, the book reports you have prepared
have served a simple purpose: to prove that you have completed, and understood, the assigned
reading. They were a way for your teachers to test you. The book reports you write in college
should still prove that you have done the reading, of course, since this is crucial to your ability to
establish authority, but at the university level your writing is more than a test. Now, like all your
writing, your book report should be useful to its reader in his or her scholarly work—and to you,
in your own.

Think of your book report as a step in the research process: it should add the book to its reader's
knowledge base. The next time you and your reader approach this topic, instead of reaching for
the book itself to decide whether it's a useful resource, you should reach for this book report. In
order to fulfill this function, your report should explain, analyze, and evaluate the book you've
read, with respect to the literature surrounding it, the other assignments you've been given for the
class, and the discussions you've had leading up to this particular reading assignment.

 Explain: What happens in the book? What does your reader need to know about it? If it tells a
story (fictional or otherwise), what is the plot? Here is where you'll need to identify the setting
and the characters. If, instead of a narrative, your book is expository prose, what is the main
idea or argument? What is it claiming, or trying to convince its reader to think, believe, or do?
 Analyze: How does the book tell its story or make its argument? What tools does it use? Here,
you may want to discuss themes, motifs, symbols, and other rhetorical devices the book uses.
 Evaluate: How effectively does the book accomplish its purpose, communicate its ideas, or
argue its point? How convincing is it? Where does it fit into the course for which you've been
assigned this report, and how do you imagine discussing it in class? How useful will it be to
someone undertaking further research? Evaluating a text is not the same as saying whether or
not you enjoyed reading it. Your reader needs to know about the book—not about you.

Where to Begin
Start taking notes as soon as you start reading. Some students make the mistake of waiting until
they have finished reading to begin writing. You should always be writing! If you own the book
you're reporting on, take notes in the margins. If not, keep a notebook with you while you read so
that you can consult your notes later. Once you get into the habit of this, it will make your
reporting much easier.

You already know the basic structure of your report, and what you'll need to pay attention to
while you read in order to explain, analyze, and evaluate a work. Here are some vital questions
you can usually answer before you even open the book:
  Author: Who wrote it? What, if anything, do you know about the author? This is one of the most
important things to know about any book, since it is perhaps the primary category most readers
use to organize their knowledge of texts.
 Publication Information: When and where was it published, and by whom? What do you know
about that time and place, or about that publisher? No matter what kind of book you're
reporting on, these are important questions to keep in mind as you read.
 Genre: Are you reporting on a novel? A biography? A history? A critical or theoretical argument?
Is your book fiction or nonfiction? Who is its intended audience, and how does it expect them to
approach it?
 Title: The title is one of the best ways to start answering the last question, since it is what the
author him/herself decided to use to introduce the book to its reader. What does it do for you?
What does it accomplish for the book itself? What does it tell you about the book? What does it
tell you to expect? What, if anything, does it assume you already know?
 Cover Art, Book Jacket, Et Cetera: This can be a little more complicated, because often the
author of a book has no control over how the work is packaged. That's obvious in the case of,
say, recent editions of Shakespeare plays or Dickens novels, but it's usually also true of
contemporary works by living authors. Still, the way that its publishing company chooses to
package and sell a book can help you to identify its target audience and decide whether it will be
useful to your research. You may not decide to include this information in your finished report,
but it will be helpful to you in preparing to read and write.

Not: But:

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was
Publication Information: New York: Scribner, 1925. My published in New York City by Charles Scribner's Sons in
copy: 1999. 1925.
Genre: Novel
Title: The Great Gatsby

The first column here is more like what appears in a bibliography, which we'll cover later.
Notes to Keep While Reading
Now, you're ready to open the book, begin reading, and prepare to write your book report. You
organize your report according to the questions a reporter asks: Who? What? Where? When?
How? Why? Keep in mind the following usual components of a book report, so that you can take
notes and know what to read for.

Is Your Book Narrative or Expository Writing?

For the purpose of easy classification, we will divide the books you may be assigned into two
major categories. You may already think of these as fiction and nonfiction, but the more useful
distinction is between narrative and expository prose. Narrative texts can be fiction or nonfiction.
They tell stories, fictional (as in a novel or a short story) or not (as in a biography or history).
Expository texts, which are usually nonfiction, inform and explain, as in a critical or theoretical
work. The content of a book reports will vary according to whether the book is narrative or
expository, but the form should be largely the same.

Summary (Reporter's Questions: Who? What? Where? When?)

This is where you make it clear to your instructor and reader that you've completed your assigned
reading. You'll demonstrate that you've made yourself familiar with the book and its contents,
and you'll introduce your reader to them. You should go into enough detail to make this clear,
and to make clear that you've gone beyond reading someone else's summary (more on this in the
plagiarism section) or watching the movie. You still need to be economical with your language
and with your reader's time—get to the point as quickly as you can.

Narrative: Introduce the setting and major characters. Give an overview of the plot. Note that it
is customary, especially when discussing works of fiction, not to give away the ending.

Expository: Introduce the author and his or her background. Identify the main idea, or what the
book proposes to teach or explain to its reader. Explain the historical or academic context of the
book's most important claims. What do you need to know in order to make sense of the material,
and what do you learn that you didn't already know?

Analysis (Reporter's Question: How?)

This section is where you can display your insight into, and expertise in, the book and its topic.

Narrative: Give a more detailed account of the plot. You'll need to introduce some minor
characters, and you may want to give a chapter-by-chapter account of what happens and how it
unfolds. It may help, in this section of your book report, to know the following terms, which
belong to a diagram called Freytag's Pyramid (see below), named for the 19th century German
scholar and playwright Gustav Freytag:
  Exposition: gives the reader the basic information needed to understand the story: the
characters, setting, and basic conflict
 Rising action: complicates the basic conflict, presenting the characters with obstacles to
overcome and other secondary conflicts.
 Climax: the dramatic, often exciting, point at which things begin to change for the story and the
characters.
 Falling action: the resolution of the climax's conflict.
 Denouement (pronounced Day-Knew-Mwah): illustrates the state of affairs after the climax, or
the consequences of whatever decisions the rising action and climax forced the characters to
make. Usually, in a comedy, the denouement shows how things have gotten better for the
protagonist; in a tragedy, it shows how they have gotten worse.

Freytag's pyramid is not a mathematical formula. Like the terms it gives us, the pyramid is
simply a tool for understanding how stories work. Unless you have been specifically assigned
this task, you should not diagram the book you have read according to Freytag's pyramid. You
can help your reader understand how the story develops, though, by identifying its components.

Expository: Break down the book's argument for your reader. How does its author establish his
or her authority on the subject matter? How does the book advance its thesis? What particular
claims make up its argument? What are its major examples, and what do they prove? What kind
of rhetorical appeals does the book make? Explain and follow its logic as it develops throughout
the book.
Evaluation (Reporter's Question: Why?)
This section will be largely the same, whether you are writing about a narrative or expository
text. It is where you can bring your own thoughts on the book into play, as long as you remember
that your thoughts and responses are different from your likes and dislikes. Be sure to focus on
the book itself, and not on whether you enjoyed reading it. What do you think of this book?

What do you agree with or disagree with? What makes it important—worth writing a report on,
or assigning you to report on? Would you recommend it, or assign it, to others? What would you
tell them before they read it? What are the first few things you would bring up for discussion
with someone else who had read it, or with someone like you, expert enough to report on it to
others? What kinds of questions does this book raise in the context of the class for which it was
assigned to you? What avenues for exploration does it open up?

Conducting Further Research

Sometimes, you'll want to look outside the book itself to fill in some of the gaps in your
knowledge of the book. Outside research can help you create a fuller picture of the historical,
literary, or academic context in which your reading assignment exists, and to more effectively
analyze and evaluate your reading material. It can also impress your reader with the extra effort
you've put into your book report! Supplemental reading material is never a substitute for doing
the reading assignment itself.

Using Sample Papers and Evaluating Outside Sources

You're not alone, and you don't need to reinvent the wheel: we can almost guarantee that you are
not the first student or scholar to write about the book that you've been assigned. This is good
news: you can turn to others' writing for help. Writework.com has a database of over 100,000
sample papers and guides — some were written by experts like me, and others were written by
students like you. You may be able to find one that discusses your reading assignment, its author,
and/or other works by its author. When you are looking for outside sources to supplement your
own ideas, you'll want to keep two things in mind: you need to evaluate your source, and you
need to carefully avoid plagiarism.

To evaluate your source, you need to identify both its author and the venue in which it was
published.

What do you know about the author? What credentials--professional, academic, or otherwise—
does he or she present? In most academic writing situations, a piece written by a professor at a
well-respected university will carry more weight than one written by a student at that university,
a blogger, or an online reference source such as Wikipedia. Next, what do you know about the
publication itself? Is it a scholarly, journalistic, or popular publication?
Scholarly sources are the bound journals in your library. They are often published by universities
or by university presses. Usually, their contributing authors are scholars—professors and
researchers in the journal's or the book's specialized field. They are always peer reviewed, which
means that an editorial board consisting of experts in the field has been consulted before the
work was published.

Journalistic sources include most newspapers and magazines with which you're familiar. They
are published by for-profit corporations that accept advertising, and they cater to a wider and less
specialized audience than do scholarly sources. They have editors, departments of standards and
practices, and mechanisms by which readers and the general public can hold them accountable.

Popular sources are usually self-published. They are not regulated by an outside authority, and
often do not require their authors to make themselves available or accountable to correction.
Many blogs, term paper sharing websites, and internet sources fall into this category.

Each type of source can be useful to you in your research, but you need to be aware of which
you've found, and what kind of authority it wields. As a general rule, you will find scholarly
sources to be most effective, but you can use any of them to help refine or inspire your thinking
about a text or topic.

Avoiding Plagiarism

Whatever source or sources you use, you are always responsible for avoiding plagiarism. Your
school has a code of conduct, with whose particular definition of plagiarism you should make
yourself familiar. For our purposes: using, borrowing, appropriating another's work (words or
ideas) in any way without acknowledgement or proper citation constitutes an instance of
plagiarism. It is the language equivalent of stealing from another, whether it involves using
another's exact words without giving credit or paraphrasing another writer's ideas, opinions,
graphs, statistics, facts, et cetera.

Avoiding plagiarism, for all the trouble it causes in education, is simple. When doing research,
document with careful and precise notes, so that you know what you have read and when. When
writing, pay careful attention to where you learned any information that you put forth—and if it
is neither common knowledge nor your original idea, cite its source. You must cite outside
sources whether you copy their claims word for word or paraphrase their ideas. In addition to
impressing your reader with all the outside work you have done, careful citation will make your
report a more useful document to both you and your reader, since you will be able to situate it
within the larger body of work on your topic.
Citations and Bibliographies

There are a variety of citation formats, and you should check with your instructor about the one
that is correct for your book report. Ordinarily, university English courses use MLA Style. All of
the most common (MLA, Chicago or Turabian, and APA) have handbooks and websites (see
below), and many computer programs, such as EndNotes, will format your citation, footnotes or
endnotes where required, and bibliography or Works Cited page in the style of your choosing.
All the styles serve the same basic goal: to help your reader locate the original source material,
on the Internet, in the archives, or on the shelf. You should note the author's name, all the
publication information, and the page numbers where applicable. Once you get into the habit of
documenting your sources and preparing bibliographies, it's really very easy.
About WriteWork.com
Established in 1995, WriteWork is an online academic resource featuring a student community
with over 375.000 members and a comprehensive library of research papers, essays, and book
reports. WriteWork also offers a number of hands-on writing guides written by PhD Professors
from some of the most well established colleges and universities in the world. Writing guides
include: How to Write a Research Paper and How to Write an Essay.
Suggested Further Reading

On MLA Style:
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. mlahandbook.org

On Chicago Style:
The Chicago Manual of Style.

On APA Style:
Concise Rules of APA Style

On more general questions about writing and research:

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/

Diana Hacker's Research and Documentation Online

http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanities.html

The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Wayne Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph
Williams

A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition by Kate
Turabian