9364 Week 2: Teens, Reading and the Library - YA Book Review

Our second assignment for week 2 of my LIS 9364 class was to find a review of a YA book from a professional or mainstream source and then provide a critique on it. My critique was influenced by the criteria presented by the CM Magazine and VOYA's Reviewing Guidelines.

The review I chose to critique was Kirkus's review of Just One Day by Gayle Forman (click the link to be directed to the review), a new title which has been released just this week.

The first thing that struck me about this review was that it initially appeared to not have a complete bibliographic description. At the top of the reviewing one can find the title, author, recommended age-range, and links to websites that sells the book. However, there was no ISNB, publisher, publication date, page count or price. It took me awhile to notice that the aforementioned information was included at the bottom of the page, and not at the top with the rest. Most book reviews that I have read keep all this information together (usually at the top of the page), so I am slightly surprised that Kirkus formatted their review in this way. To me, it makes more sense to keep the bibliographic information all together in one place. However, I can see how having some of the information at the bottom I suppose can keep the top of the page from appearing cluttered.

I found the review-proper to be much more informative. Despite its brevity, it conveys a lot of information about the book and paints a fairly clear portrait of what the novel is about. The synopsis of the plot that the reviewer provides is not overly long and provided useful information such as the genre of the novel (it is clearly a contemporary novel), literary conventions used (it is described as a "coming-of-age novel"), and prevalent themes (the reviewer discusses the novels use of Shakespeare as a vessel for exploring identity). There is some criticism leveled against the book, but it is stated clearly and succinctly and may help readers judge if the novel is a good fit for them (reluctant readers may not be willing to wait out what the reviewer felt like was a slow beginning to experience a satisfying conclusion).

The review is written in a clear and concise style that appears to largely fit into VOYA's guidelines (it avoids use of the first person, it uses the active voice, etc.) which makes it easy to read and gets its point across with as little as possible. I appreciated how much the reviewer was able to convey with so little, and I think potential readers will be able to fairly gauge whether they think this novel is worth their time. It provided a insight for myself which I will be taking into consideration when I get around to reading the novel myself (which I plan to do.)


Works Cited:

"Kirkus | JUST ONE DAY by Gayle Forman." Kirkus Reviews. N.p., 1 Dec. 2012. Web. 9 Jan. 2013. <https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gayle-forman/just-one-day/>.