Helping Your Book Review Stand Out in a Crowd

The 8th annual Multicultural Children’s Book Day on and offline celebration (1/29/21) may be over, but the discovery of new and amazing diverse books for kids and teens continues!

We also love seeing how creative our 700+ reviewers are when it comes to reviewing beautiful diverse titles. If you are feeling ‘stuck” when it comes to sharing your book reviews in a way that will grab people’s eyeballs, here are some great tips for Helping Your Book Review Stand Out in a Crowd.

Tips for Creating Unique Book Reviews

Be Yourself: One of the easiest ways to make your review different from anyone else’s is to just.be.YOU. You are uniquely YOU so your thoughts and feedback are already going to be different than everyone else. But if you are looking for extra ways to help your book review stand out in a crowd, add some “value-added” elements!

Vibrant Images: Create some fun and eye-popping images to go along with your review. These images can be something that puts the book itself front-n-center…

…or images that share an inside peek at the book itself.

Dive Deeper Into The Story: Bring the story to life and encourage readers/families to do the same after they read “The End.” Share discussion questions activity ideas, links to downloads from the publisher that are related to the book, or things about the book that resonated with your life story. Many of the authors and publishers will have ready-to-go activities downloadable coloring pages and discussion questions on their websites. Use those activities, downloads, or discussion questions to engage your own family in book-related activities and share the results as part of your review.

Get To Know the Author or the Illustrator: Another thing I like to do just because it’s fun and interesting is learn more about the author and the illustrator because I promise they are interesting people! Getting to know them can be as simple as asking a few questions via email or as complex as scheduling a time for a phone interview. Either way, I promise you will discover a treasure trove of interesting facts about how their story came to be and even the trials and tribulations of their author journey.

Discovery Questions to Ask:

• What inspired them to write the book?
• How did the author and illustrator meet?
• Who is their inspiration is or who their favorite author is?
• What would they like readers to understand about the book?
• Where do they see themselves in five years? Ten years?
• What book have they always dreamed of writing?
• If they could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

Keep Calm and Read On!

Rebecca “Becky” Flansburg is an author, freelance writer, and project manager for the non-profit online children’s literacy initiative, Multicultural Children’s Book Day/ #ReadYourWorld. Join the celebration! Our 9th annual celebration will take place on January 28, 2022. For more information, visit Multicultural Children’s Book Day on the web.