{Special Message from Project Manager, Becky Flansburg}
We are so excited that things are rolling along beautifully for our Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2021 event! Currently, we are working on wrapping up book matching for the year and are busy planning to make our annual Twitter Party even more epic than it has been in the past.
So today, I want to talk a little bit about the process of book reviewing for this event. Basically, when we asked our reviewers to review a book for our online (and offline) celebration, we would like them to do a handful of things.
The Basic Book Review for MCBD2021
The main thing is to share the title of the book the authors name the illustrator if possible and also who gave them the book whether it’s the publisher’s name like capstone or hoopoe etc. then include a brief summary of the book itself with the book is about, your thoughts on the book what you liked or didn’t like about the book and then the mandatory information that MCBD will be supplying you around the 14th of this month. AND DON’T FORGET–#ReadYourWorld
We also encourage (in the vein of disclosure) that reviewers mention that they were gifted the book they are reviewing.
The Basic Element for a Book Review is:
- Share the title of the book, the author, and the illustrator. Phrase it like “I was gifted a copy of_____”
- If applicable, mention the publisher (Capstone, Candlewick, Star Bright, Pack-N-Go Girls, etc)
- It’s important that you mention the word gifted.
- Then, share a brief summary of the book, your thoughts/likes about the book, and then (whenever possible) as much of the mandatory info we will send around the 14th as possible.
- And don’t forget the #ReadYourWorld Hashtag!
On the flipside, if you are leaving a review on Amazon, just leave a review as you normally would. You don’t need to mention you were gifted the book and you don’t need to include any of the mandatory MCBD information. Just leave a review like any normal person would do if they bought a book and wanted to review leave a review for the author.
Here’s an example of reviews from 2020.
NOTE: We are a little behind on getting this mandatory information out because we still have sponsors trickling in which is unusual but 2020 was just an unusual year so we’re not surprised. So bear with us a little longer on that! We’d like our reviewers to begin posting their reviews as close to the celebration date (1/29/21) as possible because it’s great for building buzz.
Next Leveling Your Book Reviews
Now let’s talk about how to make your book review unique. We have many reviewers, almost 700 from all over the globe, reviewing books. And many will be reviewing more than one book! We roughly figure that during this event there will be 1200 to 1400+ books being reviewed on social media. Impressive, right?
That being said, the question has come up about the uniqueness of reviews during this online celebration.
The question was posed that if five people are reviewing the same book, wouldn’t the reviews (plus the mandatory copy-n-paste info) make them all look the same? Actually NO, and that is why we want to encourage our reviewers to think outside the box a little when writing their review for MCBD.
And It’s actually easier than You think.
Now we completely understand that if you are writing a review on a blog you obviously have more space and word count when sharing reviews and it’s a little harder on social media especially Twitter.
If you are reviewing on Twitter, I would definitely stick just to the formula of the title of the book the author in the illustrator –tag them when you can and don’t forget to include #ReadYourWorld
If you are sharing your review on a blog, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube, you have more wiggle room on how wordy you can be.
You will also have more word count to be able to include as much of our mandatory information as possible. The most important piece of the Mandatory Book Review info we will send to you all around the 14th is the list of our Medallion Sponsors and our Author Sponsor because they appreciate the name mention on social media.
In that case, here are a few ideas on how to make your review unique.
Ways to Next Level Your Reviews
- Ways to make your review different from anyone else is to just be YOU. You are uniquely YOU so your thoughts and feedback are already going to be different.
- You can 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 with your own family and share the results as part of your review.
- TALK TO YOUR AUTHOR: Learn more about the author and the illustrator because we promise they are interesting people! Ask them questions about their author/illustrator journey or ask the Author what inspired them to write the book.
I have a lot of experience in interviewing people for national magazines so I have created templated questions that seem to be good conversation starters and a great way to get to know someone better.
These questions are great to ask just to find out a little more about the person behind the book.
You don’t have to ask all five questions, and you don’t have to call them on the phone (unless you want to). You can choose one question email them and share their answer and then bingo you have a unique element to your book review.
We appreciate all of the reviews that people are producing for this wonderful event! We are very proud and grateful to all of those folks who are helping this children’s literacy celebration grow and evolve year after year.
Thanks for the guidance!