When I was in high school I wrote a very memorable book report. It was about the book Of Mice and Men, a book I hadn't bothered to read before writing the report. I'm not sure what I was thinking, writing a book report on a book I hadn't read, and since I didn't know what the story was about I had to get creative.

The book report was to be three pages long, but what I knew about the story, gleamed from the book's synopsis, would only fill half a page–and that was including a lot of the fluff I'd included to bulk up the report. My grand solution to this dilemma was to include sketches in my book report. I'll make a disclaimer for you before continuing: I did not do drugs in high school. So I drew my sketches (which I thought were very appropriate, considering the topic. I drew some mice and a few men and then I drew mice and men together) and handed in my report. My English teacher was not amused. In fact, she was so not amused by my outright mockery of her assignment that she asked to see me after class.

I don't know what came over me to hand in a report so obnoxious. I could've spit in my teacher's face and she would not have been angrier with me. I got yelled at for fifteen minutes after class, and then assigned to detention every day after school for a week. She flunked me on the book report and would not let me make up the grade. She said I had an attitude problem and she was probably right. I never messed around with a book report like that again, and if I ever found myself unprepared to write an essay or report, I just didn't hand one in rather than mocking the assignment.

A proper book report should have a summary of the book, a discussion about the characters and themes, and then an opinion at the end for the reader's thoughts. There are ways to get around writing your own genuine report but I wouldn't advise doing any of them. A decade or two ago, students would use Cliff's Notes as an alternative to reading the whole book before writing about it. Now there are places online where you can buy a book report and you don't even have to bother reading the Cliff's Notes. Either way, it's a risky game and it's probably just easier to read the book and then write the report. After all, the book report is probably the easiest written assignment outside of the creative nonfiction essay in any English class.

[tags]book report, books, home work[/tags]