Skip to Main Content

English: Book reviews and structure: Book Reviews

'How to' guides for creating book reviews and book trailers online

Book reviews and trailers

Book reviews

A 'how to' guide

What to include in a book review:

  • the title of the book – encourage children to find it on the cover of the book and copy from there
  • the name of the author – again, encourage children to copy it from the cover of the book
  • this is what happened in the book – a short summary of the events of the book, this is a great exercise for little children in generalizing and selecting the most important events and characters
  • recommend or not recommend the book and why – here children can give their personal opinion and what they like (or dislike) most about the book

What is in a Book Review

Create a great title for your book review

The title of the review should convey your overall impression and not be overly general.

Strong titles include these examples:

  • "Full of action and complex characters"
  • "A nail-biter that will keep you up all night"
  • "Beautiful illustrations with a story to match"
  • "Perfect for animal lovers"

Weak titles may look like this:

  • "Really good book"
  • "Three stars"
  • "Pretty good"
  • "Quick read"

Free (and free to use) photo websites

Examples of video reviews

The very easiest way to create a video review is by creating a google slides presentation, and narrating this with screencastify. 

In the slideshow, you can insert pictures and/or text. the pictures can either be your own OR downloaded (make sure they are free to use and you are not using someone else's photos without permission). For free photo websites see below.