 So how to write a book review? Well, let's begin with the question, what is a book review? And I already made the point that there is a difference between a book review and a book report. Probably all of us have written book reports. And usually, the purpose behind it is the professor just wants to know you read the book. A book review goes beyond that. The analogy that I like to use is the difference between where you're watching a sporting event on TV, the difference between the play-by-play guy and the color commentary. Play-by-play is just a summary of what's happening. That's a book report. This is what the book is about, just a summary. The play-by-play, though, goes beyond that and analyzes what's going on, right? Gives you background information, gives you stats, explains what's going on in the field, talks about the plays, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the players. That's more what a book review is. It includes the play-by-play. You can't do the commentary unless you've got the play-by-play. So you're going to have some summary we'll see in the book review. But the review is the commentary, the analysis, the understanding of what the author is trying to do and then an evaluation of that. So a book review, here are some of the elements of a good book review that we'll talk about. Number one, sorry, it's a little small writing, identify the author's purpose for writing. We'll talk about that. Number two, identify the author's thesis, and it's important to distinguish between the two. A lot of book reviews I read cite the author's purpose as his thesis, and we'll talk about the difference. Number three, identify the arguments used in support of the thesis by the author. Four, evaluate the arguments and not just give an unfounded assessment of the arguments, but actually support your analysis. This is weak or this is strong because, and give some thoughtful interaction. And finally then, draw conclusions about the book's usefulness and impact. Because of all of that, who would best read this book, what is the best use of this book? So we're going to explore all of these areas as we go through how to write a good book review. But I want to address the question next, though. Why write a book review? Why do your professors assign book reviews in the first place? And I want to address this because typically a lot of students think, well, the only reason for this is just to prove I've read the book. And that's why a lot of students just write book summaries. But I want to argue that there's a more substantial purpose behind reading and behind writing a book review and why I expect more than just a summary. Number one, the best way to develop your own thinking is by evaluating the thinking of others. We're all about thinking, obviously, here. Thinking through what scripture teaches with regard to worship and church music. Thinking through the implications of scripture and then practical application. Especially in our worship and ministry courses, that's what we're focusing on, obviously. It's not just about memorizing facts. It's about drawing implications and wrestling through these things, especially at the graduate level. One of the best ways to do that and to improve your own thinking is by reading other good thinkers or even bad thinkers. You can learn from the good and the bad of other thinkers. So that's one of the reasons we do this. Second, to better understand the literature and ideas in your field. Obviously, professors assign you books that they think are important to read in your area or in the area, the topic area of the class. And so a thorough analysis of that book is going to help you understand better the ideas. Or I do this a lot in our depth classes. I'll let you choose a book that contributes to your final research project. And so obviously then there's benefit of really going deep in a couple books that contribute to your paper and gives you a better knowledge of what's going on rather than just a surface knowledge. Writing a book review then just practically is a good introduction for someone else who's not read the book. Many of you know we publish an annual journal of worship and church music here through our school called The Artistic Theologian and we include book reviews. One of the reasons is we review any new book that's coming out in the past year on the subject of worship and music and it's a way for people who don't have time to read them all to get a basic introduction. So just practically speaking, there's a benefit there. And that's where the summary does have a place. Also these next two are sort of related to practice writing for an academic audience. A book review is an academic exercise. It's not a blog, it's not something casual. It's an academic exercise and so it gives you practice in that that's a little bit simpler than writing a full blown research project or a full blown journal article. Along with that, writing book reviews is the first step towards academic publishing. If you have any aspirations at all and I hope many of you do of writing academically in your career, journal articles, full length volumes, book reviews are the first step. It gives you the tools and the practice in a simpler format of writing academically so that you can then write journal articles for publication and then eventually a full length volume. So it's practical in that respect, especially for those of you who are more inclined towards that. This is a workshop on how to write a book review but we're gonna spend about the first half of our time talking about how to read a book, okay? And you think, well, I know how to read, duh. But really 90% of the work involved in writing the book review is having a strategy towards reading it well so that you can discern what's going on in the book and then put it in print. So I wanna spend a little bit of time talking about this. I highly recommend this book by Mortimer Adler how to read a book. Okay, and obviously he's more than talking about funs in this thing. This is a very helpful, easy to read, really wealth of tools on how to approach reading in all genre so that you can really get the most out of it. He talks about various levels of reading and how to work through it. It's very, very helpful. I'll use some of his material here just in this introduction. So the prerequisite for writing a Goodberg review obviously is being able to read a book. So here are some elements of strategy that I'd like to suggest to you that will help you as you read a book for the purpose of writing a critical book review. Number one, budget your time. In other words, and you'll see with the method I'm laying out here, you can't expect to finish reading the book the night before the review is due because there's more than just reading it that's required in order to write a good book review. So you've gotta figure out what time you have and I would suggest, I do this all the time with the strategy I'm laying out sort of plan out when you're gonna do what, how long is it gonna take you to do, to read the book through the method I'm gonna show you. Develop sort of a plan. Have a purpose and a strategy which is what we're talking about here. Read actively. You can't read a philosophical book for the purpose of writing a book review in the same way you're gonna read a novel. Reading a novel is an exercise in entertainment and leisure, profitable, I think. You benefit from it, but it's different from reading for the purpose of running a review. You've gotta read actively and some of the tools I'm gonna suggest will help you do that. Read it three times. Ooh. Ooh. Okay, now, I don't mean read every word three times. So don't worry, okay? You'll only really read the book once, but I suggest going through the book three times if you really wanna understand it, no one's gonna know what's going on. And it's very, very doable. Adler talks about different levels of reading and that's really what I'm building off of. So here are the three stages and you'll see only one of them is really reading the book. Two of them on either side are going through the book for specific purposes. I'm using a little bit of Adler's terminology with some adjustment. He talks about elementary reading, inspectional reading, and then analytical. I'm sort of mixing the first two and just using his inspectional. And I'll go through what I mean by each of these. But the inspectional phase is simply for discovery. You should comprise, and this is where you can use budgeting, five to 10% of your time. Analytical is the bulk. That's where you're actually reading every word and that is for understanding 60, 70% of your budget at a time. And then finally the organized stage where you recall and gather your notes and prepare to actually write the analysis. So it's, you're reading through it three times, but not really, so don't have a heart attack. Okay, first level, the inspectional reading. What's important here is to recognize that most good books are structured in an hourglass format on several levels. Okay, so I've got a picture of hourglass over there for those of you who might not know what I'm talking about. The primary ideas, the important ideas are typically presented at the beginning and the end in various levels throughout the book. So the book itself, usually the beginning of the book and the end of the book are gonna have the most important ideas. Each chapter is gonna be structured this way. The most important ideas of the chapter beginning, most important ideas at the end. Each section within the chapter, if there are sort of subheadings, each section the authors is laying out, same structure. And even each paragraph typically will have a topic sentence, will narrow down and then broaden out again. So one very helpful technique even just for speed reading. People usually think that speed reading means people just can read every word fast. For some people it does, but I use this technique to speed read all the time. If I just wanna get the general sense of a book, I'll read the introduction and the conclusion, the first and last section of every chapter and then the first and last sentence of every paragraph and skip everything else. You can't get a full analytical reading done that way, but you can get a general sense of a book just focusing on the beginning and end of each of these different elements. And then the more specific information, the supporting evidence of the author's arguments are gonna be at the narrow point of the hour left. So when you're doing analytical reading for a book review, you have to read the supporting stuff. But the first pass through a book, you can just do a basic inspectional reading. So if you're gonna read it analytically, you probably wouldn't do what I just said, introduction, conclusion, first section, last section. You probably wouldn't get in that depth because you're gonna do that anyway. But nevertheless, I would suggest before you read it analytically, doing at least one level of inspectional by paying attention to the following elements, the cover. Really? Yeah. A good book and a good publisher are gonna tell you what the book's about just by the cover and especially by the subtitle. Usually titles of books are something witty and colorful but your subtitle is important. There's one book I'm thinking of and I won't go into details because some of you in Congressional Sign will review this next semester. But the subtitle gives the thesis and so many people write the review of the book and totally miss the thesis and it's right there on the cover. So pay attention to the cover. All right. Number two, the table of contents. Look through the table of contents. See if you can discern what's gonna be going on in the book, the flow of the argument, the primary topics covered. Same thing with the index. Flip through the index and look at what kinds of subjects are referenced in the book. It's gonna give you an introductory idea so you already have some ideas floating before you actually dive into the book. If you just dive in cold turkey, you might not know the context for what you're looking at. If you look at the table of contents in the index, you're gonna have some idea already. Bibliography, same thing. Look at the titles of the books in the bibliography. It's gonna frame your mind to be ready for what the book is gonna talk about. Introduction, it's important to read that introduction. Nine times out of 10, the author's gonna give you your thesis or at least direct you in that direction. Conclusion, I mentioned those two areas already. Flip through, are there any pictures? Yeah, are there any tables, examples, diagrams? Just flip through and see if you can find those sorts of things. Again, it will set your frame of reference to be ready to dive into the analytical level of the reading. Section headings, just flip through, look at the bold section headings. The author has chosen those as what he thinks are the main ideas. You can get a basic sense of the book by never reading a word of the book and just reading the chapter titles in the section headings. It's gonna give you a basic idea of what's going on. And then any special type or format, italics, bold, underlying, sometimes a book will have call-outs where they pull out quotes and make them distinct. Flip through and look at those sorts of things. Again, your whole purpose, I mean at one level if you're just speed reading, you can do this much and be done. A lot of times I'll get a new book, do this much and think, eh, not worth it. And I won't go any further. Of course, if you're writing a book review, you may have to go further, so. But sometimes this might be just a good introduction to a book, but even if you're gonna read it completely, doing this step will help set your frame of reference for a really good analytical read of the book. So what about the analytical reading stage? What are some things that you should be paying attention to? And there's even some preparatory things here. Number one, know the author. We'll talk about in a moment that at the beginning of any good book review, you're gonna find some biographical information about the author. The purpose of that is not just arbitrary. The purpose for the reader is by you knowing a little bit of the background of the author. His education, his denominational affiliation, his theological presuppositions, you're going to be able to come to the book again with a frame of reference for analyzing what's going on. So do a little preliminary research. Look up the Wikipedia article on the guy. You should never cite Wikipedia. Wikipedia is never a final source, but it's often a good place to start. You can at least get some basic information and then corroborate it with some other sources. Know a little bit about the author. Very similarly, know the context. In other words, many authors are writing in response to a larger debate or in response to another author or within the context of a certain philosophical discussion. If you know that coming in and the author might not always tell you, he might in his introduction, but he might not always tell you. So doing a little bit of preliminary research, just Google the guy, Google the book and see what comes up. It might tip you off. Knowing the context in which he is writing before you even start reading will help you be able to see what his point is. Use your unconscious mind. And here's what I mean by this. This is another reason you can't just wait to the night before to finish reading the book. Some people might be able to do that, but most people, myself included, have to read the book and then set it aside for a little bit and let it just percolate for a while. It's really what it often takes to be able to really analyze somebody and especially be able to organize your thoughts. A lot of people, I got a book review coming up, so they read it in two days and they just plop down and start typing. You may be like a super writer, super thinker, and there's some people like that. I'm not one of them. I have to read, set it aside, let it think for a while, and then all of a sudden it's amazing. I've got this idea of how I want to organize my thoughts and then I sit down and write it. So allow yourself some time as you budget. Now you're busy students and you've got 12 book reviews to write this semester and all that kind of stuff, so there's limits, but I recommend leaving some time to allow the thoughts to percolate. Have a dialogue with the author. Mark it up. Let me show you an example of this. So here's just one book I pulled off the shelf. I like to use little tabs. You can get it at any office, a supply store, anything I quote or think is important as I'm reading analytically. I'll underline, I'll write in the margins, and then I'll just tab it. And that way later in my organization stage, I know where I want to go. Or if I'm not tabbing it, at least I have written some things. Dialogue with your author. I talk to the author in my marginal notes. I mean you'll find things like just randomly, no way. Disagree with him here. I think he assumes way too much in the way of optimistic power of Christians in culture. I'm just constantly talking, possibly, exactly this is the problem. Have to think about this more. I'm constantly dialoguing with the author, with my pen. Not only does that help me later when I'm organizing for writing, but just practically speaking, helps you stay awake. Helps you keep your mind active. It's very easy. If you've been in my office, I have a wonderful leather, easy chair that I read in. Low lighting. I've got to have that pen, and I'm scribbling the whole time, talking to the author as I write, to help keep my mind active. And then later in the organization stage, I can go back to that. Okay, questions to ask while reading. And I'm just gonna bullet point these, and we'll talk about specifically some of these here in a moment. What is the general subject matter? Obviously, should be easy to summarize. What is the theme? So now we're narrowing from the general subject matter to the theme. What is the purpose of the book? Why is he writing it? Is he responding to someone else? Does he think there's a problem out there with something? Why is he writing the book? Then, what is the main thesis? And by thesis, we'll talk about it in a moment. We mean his primary argument. What is this author trying to prove, disprove, explain, argue, analyze, excuse me, et cetera. And again, I wanna emphasize there's a difference between purpose and thesis. Okay, and we'll hide that again in a moment. And then, what are the primary arguments used in support of the thesis? But here's his argument, and here's a list of seven, 10, 15 arguments and sub-arguments that he uses in this document to support his primary thesis. Or the secondary arguments. Okay, so there's the list. Thesis, primary argument, secondary argument. That's where the bulk of the analysis is gonna happen. Okay, so what do I mean by these things? Subject, thesis, purpose, theme. Well, the subject is just the general area. One word, worship. Theme is going to be a phrase that narrows the subject matter. And this may seem elementary, but if you ask yourself this, it's gonna, again, give you a better frame of reference in narrowing down what you need to do for analyzing the book. Purpose is the immediate cause. Thesis is the argument, so there's the difference. Thesis, and it could be a number of variations. The author's beliefs about a particular aspect of the theme, the book's philosophical conclusions, the proposition the author intends to prove something along those lines, and you should be able to express it very simply without metaphor, without figurative language in one declarative sentence. Christians must be actively engaged in the culture. Something simple, something even imperative, declamatory, simple sentence that states what the author is trying to argue. So, one quick example of difference between purpose and thesis. And if you're taking my Congressional Song next semester, pay attention. So, the book Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns, by T. David Gordon, which some of you have read, some of you will read. I've read a lot of reviews that say the thesis of this book is that Johnny can't sing hymns. That's not the thesis, that's the purpose. That's why he's writing. His thesis is to answer the question, why he can't, and I won't give you what that thesis is, but that's an example of the difference between thesis and purpose. Usually, well not usually, it all depends on the author's writing style. The purpose is gonna be right there on the surface, especially in the introduction. The thesis might be a little bit more difficult to discern and the author may or may not state it right out. Some authors are gonna say, my thesis is. But even there, be careful, because sometimes authors use the word thesis a little differently. Sometimes they use thesis to mean presupposition. So, even there, be careful. Other authors treat it more inductively where they build their case and don't state their thesis till the end. Some authors might not even clearly state their thesis. So that's where it becomes a little bit difficult. But recognize the difference between purpose and thesis. So that's the analytical stage. Those are some things to look for, questions to ask as you read every word of the book. If you constantly have that in your mind, it'll help you not get lost in the details and keep the big picture the whole time. You should always be asking, how does this section support the thesis? What is this doing argumentatively in support of the primary point? Okay, then we get to the final stage. So we've got the inspectional stage where we're just scanning to set the context, the analytical stage where we're really diving down, reading every word and trying to figure things out, and then the organizational stage. I would sit down with a piece of paper probably after some time, you've read it analytically and you've set it aside for a day or two. You've allowed it to percolate a little bit. Don't just sit down and read the review. Stream of consciousness. A lot of reviews I read seem like somebody read the book, sat down and then just started typing. Okay, so this is what I think. But take some time to organize. It doesn't have to be long. But first, just write out the purpose. Why did he write this? And what is this thesis? Write an outline. What are the primary arguments? Okay, I'm arguing this thesis. The author's arguing this thesis. Here are the seven points that he uses to defend his thesis. Depending on the author, the way that these are laid out might be different. Some authors, some arguments and supportive thesis are very much deductive sort of in some ways detached points. Here are seven reasons that I'm gonna develop that support the thesis. Other authors are building a case. So in order for one argument to be true, the previous has to be true. Either way, you can still outline them. But as you're doing that, how you word it, sort of rehearse in your own mind how the argument flows because you'll wanna reflect that in your book review. Then collect the pertinent quotations to illustrate the thesis and the argument. So I've written down the purpose of Andy Crouch's culture making. I've written down what I think his thesis is. I've written down an outline, probably having to refer back of what I think are his arguments now. I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna pick out some quotes or some things that I've underlined or thought that are important that illustrate each of these points. I might not use all of those in my book review. You don't want your book review chock full with quotations. But you're gonna want a couple. So begin organizing this way. And then compile a list of strong and weak portions. So so far, this has been pretty objective. Here's his thesis, here's his purpose, here's his arguments. Now you're gonna start to say, what was strong about his arguments and thesis? Not what was strong about features of the book. That's what I get a lot. He writes well. Maybe you can put that in a book review, but I'm looking for something deeper. He was, his arguments were obscure. Okay, we're getting a little better. That's something worthy of saying. But I want even deeper than that. This point did not support his thesis because. This point was very relevant, clearly articulated and supported his main argument because there needs to be a reason behind it. You are coming at the subject as someone who is analyzing it from a particular perspective. And I wanna know that perspective. Sometimes it might be necessary to research supplemental areas. In other words, you read this argument and you don't agree with it. And maybe you have in your own mind specific reasons why this argument is weak. But sometimes you're gonna say, I don't agree with this and you might have to go look up some things to substantiate your disagreement or your agreement. It might be some scriptural support and you might have to do a little reading and searching and then concordance to support your analysis. It might be you might have read another book that contradicts this argument. You might wanna refer to that. This is weak. This doesn't work for these reasons. So and so has a better perspective here. That's often a very helpful thing to do. Okay, so that's all reading. We haven't started writing the book review yet. Writing the book review then should come fairly easily with various levels of difference in skill of writing. But if you've done that work in preparation, then writing the book review should come pretty simply. So what are elements of a good book review? You're gonna begin with, and a lot of this is just basic style stuff that you'll find in the style manual. I highly recommend you look at the book review section of the style manual. It's got some good information there. You'll start with the basic bibliographical information, just like you would in a bibliography, your author's name, title, city, state, location and date. Then you'll also include how many pages and the price of the book. Just go look on the publisher's website and see what the retail price is. Okay, this is information again for someone who's not read the book. And the book review has helped for them to know whether or not they wanna buy it. Okay, so that's, you always include that. Many of the book reviews that I read just sort of dive right in. Okay, I'm running a book review on anti-crouchless culture making and I begin with, anti-crouch is, okay, that's okay. But remember, you wanna gain an audience for your book review. Start out with something that's gonna grip their attention. Summarizing the author's purpose might be a good idea. Christians today don't know what to do with culture. Anti-crouch in culture making deals with this issue and then go on. Something at the beginning, your opening statement that'll sort of give us some idea or maybe even quoting. I did a book review for Thameliaus a couple of years ago on Brian Chappell's Christ-centered worship. I opened with, structures tell stories. So says Brian Chappell in his book, blah, blah, blah. Because that's a provocative statement that provides sort of, it's how he begins his book too and provides sort of the foundation for the rest of the book. Something provocative, a quote, the author's purpose, maybe a sort of a thesis statement, something to grip the author's, the reader's attention. Okay, then you're gonna have your introduction, yeah. Is this gonna change depending on the manual style that you use or is this format pretty much? Maybe, but generally a manual style is not gonna get this specific. This is more of a stylistic thing, so yeah. Then you're gonna have your introduction. Obviously the opening sentence is gonna be part of the introduction, but in the introduction, you're gonna wanna briefly introduce the author, his credentials, why we should even worry about this book, perhaps some of the context. So-and-so is a professor at such and such a school. He writes this book in response to the growing debate over such and such. Something that gives the reader the context of the book that you have discerned in your own background research for reading the book. Then you're gonna give us the purpose and the thesis statement. And just a couple sentences right at the beginning after you've introduced the author in the context and tell us why he wrote it and what his thesis is. Below that, you know, take care of that right off at the beginning of the review. And that clear sort of declarative sentence without a lot of pizzazz. Okay, then you may have a five to 10 sentence summary. Now I will say there are multiple ways of writing a book review. We're gonna look next at the bulk of the book review being tracing the arguments. You may combine these two. You may say I wanna summarize along with diving down and analyzing the arguments. That's a possible way. I would start here though, and this is actually how I like to write reviews if you haven't written a lot of reviews, just do a brief summary. This book is in two sections. The first section deals with such and such. The second deals with such and such. You know, very, very brief survey of what happens in the book. But that shouldn't be the bulk. A lot of students get stuck on the summary. Chapter one did this. Chapter two did this. Chapter three did this. That's not what I'm looking for, okay? Brief summary, but then the bulk of the review should be to trace the arguments. You've already stated the thesis. You've given us a general overview. The bulk of the review should be to thoroughly explain the arguments used to support the thesis. How did the author develop his thesis? What did he use to prove it? Show us. If it's a series of disconnected arguments, tell us that. If you've discerned that there's a progression of thought, tell us that. Show us how that is, okay? So this is more of an objective analysis of what's going on. And again, you may be able to combine this with what comes next. It's possible to trace the arguments and analyze them as you go. That's fine. I would recommend starting here, though, just to keep it simple. As you get more comfortable with writing book reviews or if you have experienced writing book reviews, you can combine a lot of these things as long as all of the elements are in some way present. Okay, so this should be the bulk. And then comes what should be then second most important, and that is evaluation. Critical evaluation of both the strengths and the weaknesses. Hopefully you should be able to list both strengths and weaknesses. I mean, you might come across a total lemon and say this thing stinks. Wasn't anything good about it? Or you might be able to find something that is just knocked you off your feet and you couldn't find anything weak. Probably not, but maybe. But you should try to find some strengths and some weaknesses. Again, explain and support your opinion. Not just, I disagree with his assertion. So what, okay? Who are you? You are someone, if you can say, I disagree with his assertion because this contradicts what he says. This other author argues better for this point. Something like that. This scripture contradicts what he says. I've seen some very good analysis by students analyzing the author's arguments by showing how it really contradicts what scripture itself says. That's a very good way. And then your conclusion. In two to three sentences, briefly comment on why a book is important, who might be a good audience for the book. This would be good as a textbook. This is very hard to read so only scholars are gonna be able to wait for it. Something that tells us the readability format of the book, you might say it's got some appendices, some tables in it. It's chock full of pictures that are pretty and help keep my attention. Tell us about the book generally, features of the book and that kind of thing. I wanna give you a real life example of putting this into practice. As I was thinking about this, I was thinking, okay, I gotta use a real life example, but I wanna use a book everybody's familiar with. So I was thinking, what book could I use that everybody is familiar with? And I came up with Green Eggs and Ham. So I'm gonna show you, real life, how to do a book review of Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Anybody not familiar with this book? Couple, most of you are. And we'll do a summary here in a moment. So this is obviously silly, but I just wanna show you all the elements and a basic progression through reading and doing the book review. So Green Eggs and Ham, here we go. Author, I looked this up on Wikipedia. Good place to start. I wouldn't cite it, can't trust it implicitly, but sometimes it's just a good place to get some basic information. The author is Theodore Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. I looked at some information on him and I found this statement, again, information about the author and about his context will help you interpret the book, even something as simple as Green Eggs and Ham. I found this statement, which I think is interesting. He was a perfectionist. He would sometimes spend up to a year on a book. Really? But what does that tell you about him? This wasn't just, he wasn't just writing a simple children's book. He had a purpose behind it. It took him a year to write it, okay? It wasn't uncommon for him to throw at 95% of his material, et cetera, et cetera. Interesting background information. I found this interesting, which again, as we'll see, I think, plays into this book. He drew political cartoons that often had deeper meaning to even what, deeper meaning to even what he wrote for children. I don't know what I meant by that, but anyway. That's great. In other words, he wrote cartoons that had deeper meaning, which gives a possible indication that his children's writing, even a silly story, perhaps had deeper meaning. Okay, here's a summary of the book. Sam tries to convince his friend to eat Green Eggs and Ham. His friend refuses, but after much persistence, the friend tries the dish and finds that he likes it. Basic summary. Okay, so question. What is the thesis? Okay, those of you who know Green Eggs and Ham, what's the thesis of the book? Persistence. Possibly. If you try it, you might like it. If you try it, you might like it. Possibly. Okay, here are some possible theses, and I'm listing these out of experience of what I see students put as the thesis to show you what to avoid. Green Eggs and Ham are good. Okay? At a basic level, that's the thesis. Is that really the thesis, though? How about, there are many possible places to eat Green Eggs and Ham. Okay, again, a very surface analysis of the thesis of the book. You should try Green Eggs and Ham. Okay, we're getting a little closer to the question is, is that really the point? Okay, and that's another example of where I see a lot of students who still are sort of surface in what they discern as the thesis, but sometimes you're gonna have to get deeper, and this is a perfect book, a perfect example of a book with an unstated thesis. If you're just looking for a thesis that's stated, you might do one of these. But I would suggest the thesis is, try new things because you might just like them. That's never stated as such in the book. Okay, obviously still an example. All right, finally, we're done here after this. Here is the book review I wrote for Dr. Seuss Theological Journal. Okay? But I just wanna read this and show you all the pertinent points of our book review. Okay, so I've got my title, I've got my bibliographical information there. It's a long book, 62 pages. Wow. Okay, so I start with a provocative quote that grips my audience's attention. Try them and you may, I say. In Dr. Seuss's Clever and Witty Way, Theodore S. Geisel, author of many children's popular and success, yeah, too many children there. Any popular and successful children's books motivates children to be open to trying new things because they just might like them. I've already stated the thesis. I've given background information, provocative quote, background information, context and thesis, all in two sentences. It'll probably be a little more in a substantial book, but it doesn't have to be much more. Here's my summary. In Geisel's engaging book, Green Eggs and Ham, a character named Sam I Am tries to convince his friend to try a dish called Green Eggs and Ham, though his friend is very resistant to the idea as he expresses in the above quote. Finally, his friend tries it and discovers that he actually likes the strained dish. Here is my analysis of the arguments. Geisel presses home his point to children in his book through several means. First, he reveals the stubbornness of Sam's friend by having him refuse the dish no matter what the environment or circumstances. In a house, and by the way, here is the appropriate way to include page numbers. You like that cool laser pointer? In parentheses, before the punctuation, either time or period, if you have a quote, like here, the quote goes before the citation and then the ending punctuation after. Okay, we see a lot of mistakes on that. Anyway, in a house, page 19 on a train, 33 on a boat, 44, et cetera. The fact that he insists that he does not like the dish despite the persistence of Sam clearly illustrates his stubbornness. Second, Geisel demonstrates the need to try new things through the persistence of Sam, which may be a thesis as well. Obviously, Sam is convinced that his friend will like the meal if he simply tries it, and therefore, he attempts to motivate his friend to try it by simply changing the circumstances. Third, Geisel shows that new things can be pleasant by making his character express gratitude to Sam when he finds that he indeed likes the dish. And here's an example of using a quote to support what I'm talking about. I do so like Green Eggs and Ham. Thank you, thank you, Sam, I am. Okay, here is my analysis of his arguments. The point of Green Eggs and Ham is convincing to children who might otherwise neglect trying new things. The friend's stubbornness is clearly portrayed, revealing the futility of rejecting new things. The only potential weakness to the goal of the book is the fact that children reading a silly story may not even recognize the underlying thesis. And then here is my conclusion. Green Eggs and Ham is an enjoyable children's book written using a total of only 50 words, none of them exceeding five letters except for the word anywhere, page 16. Thus, it is a fitting work for young children to both learn to read and gain an important life's lesson. Okay, silly exercise, but all of the elements are there. Okay, and what I would expect from a good book.