How to Write a Book Report

What a book report is, and how it differs from a review or analysis

A book report is usually the first extended writing about literature that students are asked to do, and it remains common in middle school, high school and some introductory college courses. Its job is to show that you read the whole book, understood its main elements and can form a supported opinion of it. That makes it broader and more descriptive than the other two forms it is often confused with.

A book review, the kind published in newspapers and magazines, is written for people deciding whether to read a book, so it summarizes lightly and judges heavily. A literary analysis argues one interpretation, such as how a symbol develops across a novel, and assumes the reader already knows the plot. The guide to writing a literary analysis covers that form. The table sets the three side by side.

Read the book with the report in mind

The quickest book reports are written by students who took notes while reading. Divide the pages by the days you have so you finish with time to spare, and keep a single sheet or document going as you read. After each chapter, write one line on what happened and the page where the most important moment occurs. Keep a running list of characters with a few words on each, because names blur halfway through a long novel. Mark passages that strike you, confuse you or seem to matter, and note your reactions as they happen; a reaction recorded on page 40 is more honest than one reconstructed at the end.

If the book is your own copy, writing in the margins saves time later. The guide to annotating a book shows a simple system of marks that makes the important pages easy to find again when you need an example for your report.

Book report format: the parts to include

Teachers vary in what they require, so the assignment sheet always wins. For a nonfiction book report, replace characters and themes with the author's main argument or purpose, the key ideas or sections of the book, and the kind of evidence the author uses: research, interviews, personal experience, documents. Add a sentence on the author's background where it explains their authority or angle, and let your evaluation ask whether the evidence supports the argument and whether the book achieves what it set out to do.

Without specific instructions, a fiction book report usually contains these parts, in this order:

• Heading and basic facts: title, author, year of first publication, genre, and your name and class.
• Introduction: a first sentence that draws the reader in, the basic facts if not given above, and a one-sentence statement of your overall view.
• Summary: the setting, the main characters, the central conflict and the major turning points.
• Characters: the protagonist and one or two others, what they want and how they change.
• Themes: two or three central ideas, each with an example of where the book shows it.
• Evaluation: what the book does well and less well, with reasons and examples.
• Conclusion: your overall judgment and who you would recommend the book to.

How to write a book report in seven steps

Once you have finished the book and your notes, the writing goes faster than most students expect. Outlining before drafting is what keeps the summary from swallowing the report; the guide to outlining an essay explains the method in more detail.

1. 1Reread the assignment and note the required sections, the length, the due date and whether you may reveal the ending.
2. 2Go through your notes and star the five or six moments you are most likely to use as examples.
3. 3Write two sentences before anything else: a one-sentence summary of the whole book, and a one-sentence verdict on it.
4. 4Outline the report section by section, assigning starred examples to the sections where they fit.
5. 5Draft the summary first, keeping it to the main conflict and turning points.
6. 6Draft the character, theme and evaluation sections, using an example with a page number for each point you make.
7. 7Write the introduction and conclusion last, then reread the whole report for tense, names and spelling.

Writing the summary without retelling the whole book

A summary answers four questions: who is this about, what do they want, what stands in the way, and what happens as a result. Write it in the present tense, the convention for describing what happens in a work of literature: Ralph calls a meeting, not Ralph called a meeting. Leave out minor characters, subplots and scene-by-scene detail unless your later sections need them.

Here is a summary of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) that covers the whole novel in one paragraph: “When a plane carrying British schoolboys crashes on an uninhabited island during a war, the boys elect Ralph as their leader and try to govern themselves, using a conch shell to call meetings and keeping a signal fire burning in hope of rescue. Jack, who leads the hunters, resents Ralph's rules, and the group splits. Fear of an imagined beast drives Jack's tribe toward violence: they kill Simon in a frenzy, later kill Piggy, and finally hunt Ralph himself, setting the island on fire. The smoke brings a naval officer ashore.”

Notice what is missing: most of the hunting scenes, many conversations, every minor boy. Each sentence carries a turning point. If your teacher asks you not to reveal the ending, stop before the final events and say instead what is at stake.

Turning your opinion into an evaluation

The evaluation is where most of your grade is won or lost, because it is the only part that shows your own thinking. “I liked it” and “it was boring” are reactions, not evaluations. Turn a reaction into an evaluation by asking what in the book caused it, then pointing to where that happens. “The middle chapters drag” becomes “The middle chapters slow down because the same argument between the two leads repeats several times without changing either of them.”

To look harder at how a key passage works, see the guide to doing a close reading.

Book report mistakes teachers see most often

These mistakes are common enough that many teachers look for them first. Check your draft for each one before you hand it in:

• A report that is almost all summary, with a sentence of opinion at the end.
• A summary based on an online synopsis rather than the book, which often shows in wrong details.
• Evaluation without examples or page references.
• Switching between past and present tense when describing the plot.
• Revealing the ending when the assignment asked you not to.
• Padding with a long biography of the author that the report never uses.
• Confusing characters' names or roles, a sign of skimming.