Writing Book Reports – Elementary School Level

Homework Center – Writing Skills

Book reports are a way to show how well you understood a book and to tell what you think about it.

Many teachers have their own rules about what a book report should look like so be sure to check, but the following parts a book report are very common and may be helpful.

Introduction

Things to include in the introduction:

• The title (underlined) and author of the book.
• Why you chose the book.
• What kind of story is it? (adventure? family? fantasy/make believe? animal? true life? scary?)

Body

In this section you want to describe the main parts of a story: theme, plot, setting, and characters. Then you can give your opinions about the book.

The Theme is the main idea of the story. Some examples might be the importance of friendship or how to be courageous in a difficult situation. Tell what you think the theme is and how you know.

The Setting is the time and place of the story. Is it set a long time ago or now. Does it take place in another country or in an imaginary place? How much time passes in the story—a day? a year? a lifetime?

The Plot is what happens. You want to tell what the story is mostly about. What is the main event or conflict? What things lead up to it? What happens as a result? How does the story end? (Sometimes you want to avoid telling the ending, or giving away the secrets of the story.)

Be careful not to re-tell the whole story in detail—you want room in your report to write about other things; instead, just say enough about it so the rest of your report will make sense.

The Characters are who the story is about. The main character is called the protagonist. Who are the other important characters? Do they help or hinder the protagonist?

Once you have summarized the book, you can tell what you think about it. You can write about whatever opinions you have. Some questions you might want to answer are:

• Did you like the story? Why or why not?
• What was the best part of the book? Why?
• How did the story make you feel? Did you feel different things at different points in the story?
• Would you recommend it to friends?
• Would you read other books by this author?
• What new things did you learn from this book?

Conclusion

This is just a sentence or two to sum up your report. Give your overall opinion of the book and the most important thing you want other people to know about it.

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