CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW DO’S AND

DON’TS

How to avoid irritating the professor when she is grading your book review

1. ITALICIZE

book, movie, newspaper and magazine titles.

“THE STAINED GLASS WINDOWS ARE IMPORTANT TO THE DESIGN OF THE SAGRADA DE FAMILIA .” THIS SENTENCE IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT AN EXAMPLE.

Use examples

ATTRIBUTE CONCLUSIONS.

Use a transition sentence to differentiate your conclusions from the author’s conclusions or the conclusions of a review.

Consider the following sentence: “Norman Cantor’s discussion of the Black Plague answered many questions about the effects of the plague in Europe.”

Whose opinion is this? ^^^

CITE TO PAGE NUMBERS.All quotes and examples from the book you read should end with a citation to the page number. For example, “According to Christopher Kelly, the Huns were not set on slaughtering and plundering Western Europe in 476 (Kelly, pg. 150).”By referring to the page number, you enable the reader to go to the book and read further arguments by Kelly.

USE MSWORD TO INSERT FOOTNOTES.

If you click on the “References” tool in Word, you will be able to insert a footnote in the proper place by clicking on “Insert Footnote”. Word will insert the footnote number and take you to the place at the bottom of the page to type your citation.

DON’TS The following won’t help your grade at all!

USE SLANG

Words such as “cool” or “bad” do not belong in a college paper.

Do not refer to a group of items as “stuff”.

You are not texting. Do not use text language.

DON’T CALL A WORK OF NON-

FICTION A NOVEL.

A novel is a work of fiction, a history book is a work of non-fiction.

DON’T IGNORE THE

INSTRUCTIONS

on what questions to answer in your book review

DON’T START SENTENCES WITH PRONOUNSHe, She, Her, It, This, or That

If you have used a pronoun to refer to a person once, the next time you refer to the person, use their name.

“In my opinion the author did great getting her point across although, she seemed to not have enough information about Cleopatra due to the fact that she made many enemies.” Is this sentence about the author or about Cleopatra?

Consider this example: “That is what makes the book, Salt, very interesting to read, enjoy and learn from.” What does “that” mean?

REFER TO PEOPLE AS “THAT”.

People are referred to as “who”.