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Sooner or later your teacher is going to assign a book report. It's a fact of life.

Book reports are not supposed to be torture. Teachers assign them to help you understand more about the books you read and to see if you actually read the books - not just the book covers.

Whether you cringe at the thought of book reports or secretly enjoy them, what you need is a "system" for tackling this kind of assignment. Writing a book report is an art that takes practice. Once you know how to go about it, it can be easy and lots of fun - especially if you put your computer to work as your assistant.

When you make your computer your assistant, it can help you:

• Pick a book.
• Take notes.
• Pop your notes right into the rough draft of your report.
• Use Spell Check and Thesaurus as your personal assistants..
• Streamline your editing. (No messy erasing. Just cut and paste your words into the right places.
• Delete what you don't need.
• Add what you do need.
• Present your report in style - regular report form as in an essay, a report with pictures, a book jacket, a play, a video, a newspaper article, a timeline, a poster, and so on.
• Hand in a neat copy to your teacher. It looks really professional!

You'll need to know how to get going writing a book report and how to put your computer to work for you. That's what we're going to tackle here. This week we'll begin with what to do when you hear those words, "A book report is due ?."

Let's get started.

What If Your Teacher Assigns a Book Report?

"Just pick a book," the teacher told your class, "and then write a book report about it. Make sure you put it in your own words. Don't copy anything from the book jacket or the book unless it's a short quote." You remember that several students moaned when the teacher announced that a book report was due. You didn't, but you felt like it. You know that writing a book report means finding a book, then reading it, and then trying to remember what it was about to write the report.

If you only knew what book to pick.

Finding a Book for Your Report

Listen carefully to the directions your teacher gave you for your book report. Maybe the instructions said that you had to pick a certain type of book or one particular book or a book by a special author. Your teacher may have told the class to pick a biography, for example. Maybe your teacher said you can pick any book you like. Of course, you realize, even though she said any book, she didn't actually mean that. You know you wouldn't be allowed to hand in a report on a comic book or on a book that's for kids who are lots younger than you are. The important thing is to follow the teacher's directions. If she wants a biography, do a biography. Otherwise, your grade on the book report won't be the best, even if you do a wonderful report.

If you need help with just what book to select for your report, go to the related links below and select Finding the "Right" Book. There you'll find tons of ideas for good books for reports.

Here's a hint for you: Don't spend all your time finding a book. Pick one and get started. You've got to read the book and then write the report. That takes time. Be sure to pick a book that:

• You're interested in!
• That's okay with your teacher!
• That can be read in the time assigned.

Got a book? Good!

Creating a Pre-Outline

The best way to use your computer to help with a book report is to begin your writing before you read the book. You can do this by creating a pre-outline. A pre-outline is an organized list of things that you will be looking for in your book. You can see some examples of pre-outlines below.

You can copy the pre-outlines you'll see below, but you can save time and all that copying by going to the related links below and selecting Book Reports: Create a Pre-Outline The outlines are waiting there for you to copy and paste into a computer writing program such as AppleWorks or Microsoft Word. Just highlight and copy the online outline you want, open a new word-processing document, and paste. Like magic, the outline's on your computer, and you can type your answers right into it - just press the return key to put some space in for your writing or typing. Then when you get ready to write your book report, you can copy and paste your answers directly into the report. Think about it! Your report will be almost done!

Remember to print your pre-outline and keep it with you as you read your book. This way, you can jot down notes even when your computer isn't handy.

Sample Pre-outlines

Story/Novel Pre-outlines
Directions: Don't forget to fill out this outline WHILE you read the book - not after! Don't be afraid to change the outline to fit your book.

Title and Author:
Character 1 Name:
Sentence about the Character: (Describe the character or tell something important.)
Action/Involvement: (What does the character do?)
Character 2 Name:
Sentence about the Character:
Action/Involvement: (What does the character do?)
(Add more characters, following the same steps.)
Setting/Place: (Where does the story happen?)
Mood: (Is the story happy, sad, crazy, etc.)
An Interesting Sentence or Two Written by the Author: (Something you'd like to quote?)
Problem Which Needs to Be Solved:
How is the Problem Solved?
What I Thought of the Book (my evaluation and recommendations)

Directions: Don't forget to fill out this outline WHILE you read the book - not after! Don't be afraid to change the outline to fit your book.

Title and Author:
Name of Person:
Dates: (When did the person live?)
Where: (In what places does the biography take place?)
Description of the Person: (What does the person look like and act like?)
Person's Childhood:
Person's Adult Life:
End of Person's Life:
Problems Faced:
How the problems were solved?
Achievements: (What did the person do that is important?)
An Interesting Sentence or Two Written by the Author: (Something you'd like to quote.)
Why is the person important?
What I Thought of the Book (my evaluation and recommendations)

Directions: Don't forget to fill out this outline WHILE you read the book - not after! Don't be afraid to change the outline to fit your book.

Title and Author:
Type of Book: (science, how-to, history, etc.)
Purpose of the Book: (Why did the author write the book?) How is the book organized? (How do you find information in the book?)
Illustrations/Charts/Photographs: (Are illustrations important to the book? If so, why?)
Interesting Part of the Book 1:
Sentence about Interesting Part of the Book 1:
Interesting Part of the Book 2:
Sentence about Interesting Part of the Book 2:
(Add other interesting or important parts.)
What did you learn from the book?
What I Thought of the Book (my evaluation and recommendations)

The Sentence Pre-outline

Some middle school students would rather to keep track of what's happening in your book by doing chapter-by-chapter sentence summaries. Using this method, after you finish reading each chapter, write a sentence or two in your own words about it. All you have to do is to make a heading such as "Chapter 1" and under the heading write a sentence or two about what happened in that chapter. Then go on to the next chapter. In the related links section below you will find a form for this type of outline by linking to Book Reports: Chapter Summary Sentence Outline. It's okay to copy it to your computer to use.

One of the problems with the Sentence Pre-outline is that the length of chapters may vary a great deal from book to book. If your book has very long chapters, you'll probably need to take more notes on each chapter. However, if your book has loads of chapters, maybe you won't need notes on all of them. You'll just have to use your common sense about what you'll need for your final report.

Got your Pre-outline?

Once you decide which pre-outline to use with your book, you're ready to begin reading and writing. As you do, you'll be filling in the information for your report in your pre-outline. Next up in Kids, Computers, and Homework will be ideas about filling in your pre-outline. You'll be doing that as you read. So actually you'll be writing your book report as you read and not reading the book and then writing a report - something you've probably done for all your other book reports.

We'll also be discussing some "No, No's" such as:

• Copying your report off the book jacket.
• Getting your mother or father to tell you what to write.
• Plagiarizing from your book.
• Leaving your book report work to the last minute. (For example, complaining to your parents that the teacher just assigned the report, and it's due tomorrow. We don't think they'll believe you. They are smarter than that.)

Coming Up Next: Start Reading and Writing