CMS 609
Book review assignment
Summer 2011
Rationale:
 To gain experience reading more critically
 To gain experience writing this specific genre
 To become more familiar with discipline journals
 To gain experience communicating with an editor
 To gain experience submitting a work for publication
Assignment:
Find a recently published (within last two years) book that needs to be reviewed.
There are many ways to go about doing this. For example, you might contact a book
review editor and ask if there are any unassigned books in particular areas and/or
look through academic publishing sites to see if there are any new books out.
Communication Education would be a natural choice for journal placement, but you
are welcome to research other publication outlets.
The subject of the book should be communication education, general pedagogy, or
any topic related to the course.
Process:
1. Contact a book review editor to see if they are interested in your review.
Once you have chosen your book, you can work with me on this stage.
2. Read review examples from that (and other) journals to get a feel for what an
academic book review looks like.
3. Read the book, taking good notes (your note process will be particular to you,
but make sure you can use the notes).
4. Write the review.
a. Reviews in our field are generally about 4 pages double spaced. The
journal will give you a word count, so make sure you pay attention to
that.
b. The writing style should be academic, and specifically targeted at the
audience of the journal where you intend to submit the review. The
best way to understand the style is to read similar reviews.
5. Turn in draft to me via email by July 19. Consider using the Writing Center
before this date. They should be very good at getting you to “tighten up” the
writing.
6. Turn in final draft to editor by July 28. Make sure that you send a copy of the
submission to me so that I know you’ve completed the assignment.
Resources:
Here is a great summary of the entire process. You should plan to read this in order
to get a more complete understanding of the genre. In particular, I like the questions
that she provides for you as you read the text. She also addresses common mistakes
in crafting a book review.
http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/siteart/jli_bookreviewguidelines.pdf
Here’s what the Purdue OWL has to say about writing academic book reviews:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/704/01/
Grading criteria:
 Selection of book
 Professionalism in attempting to place review
 Conciseness and clarity of writing
 Creativity of writing
 Critical reading of the book
Due dates:
July 19—review is submitted to me
July 28—review is submitted to book editor (and me)