Tuesday, October 27, 2015

A Ramble about Reviewing Children's Books

My deadline for the for the Children's Lit reviews are at the end of this week! EEEEEEP! I'll always be plagued by deadlines!

Anyway, if anyone is interested in reviewing for them then just go to their website for more information. They're looking for positive and sometimes negative reviews (if you think a particular book needs to not be recommended.) I've given them a couple of negative reviews before but I try to give my most honest and helpful opinion and this is what I want to ramble about!

In my experience, giving an honest opinion is the best you can do for an author or illustrator or cook or dancer or whatever that person does in life. If that person really wants to improve their craft, they need to face criticism. Sometimes criticism can get out of hand and downright dishonest, but the more they face criticism's rearing ugly head, the more courage they'll get to either take that critique and apply it to the work or even to know what criticism to keep and what to throw out. Besides listing the summary, characters, the books cohesiveness with illustrations, age group, and what setting the book may be appropriate for, honesty is on the top of that list for me when I write my reviews.

Being apart of the 12x12 has been helpful in several different ways and one of them happens to be the Facebook group where people link many helpful blog posts, experiences, books, and various inspirational material. One of the links today just happened to be relevant to what I'm trying to accomplish by the end of this week, which is to write five good reviews. If you are not apart of the 12x12, Facebook group or SCBWI, and are interested in reviewing, here's a link to that helpful and relevant post.

I'll end the rant with another pre NaNoWriMo sketch




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