English 0950 / Fall 2007

Essay #2 / Evaluating a Nonfiction Book

Writing Assignment:

Write an 2-3 page essay evaluating Lawrence Sutin's nonfiction book, Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance. State your judgment clearly, and back it up with a convincing argument based on what you consider to be the qualities or characteristics of a “good book” -- your argument must include both positive and negative points about the book. Use examples and details from the book (through summary, description, or quotation) to support the main points of your argument. You must also include information from the visiting writer session(s) you attended.

Choosing an Audience:

Even though your purpose or aim for writing is clearly stated in the assignment, you are free to choose your own audience (and/or publication scenario) for this essay -- but you must choose a specific audience to address. However, you may not write to those in this room, college students who have already read the book. Instead, you might decide to write for other college students who have not read the book (such an essay might appear in the college newspaper). Or, you might decide to write for high school teachers who are thinking of including the book in one of their classes (your essay might then be mailed to local high school English departments). You could also choose to write to high school students who are looking for a book to read (your essay might then appear in a high school newspaper). Of course, other ideas are possible (such as coworkers, fellow church members, etc.); see me if you want to “try out” an idea you are considering.

In any case, analyze your readers carefully -- and assume that they have not read the book. What might be their likes and/or dislikes in books? What might they have already read that is similar to this book? What might they already know about Lawrence Sutin? Based on your audience analysis, you can decide how you want to write the essay -- e.g. how much summary of the book you will need, how much author and historical background will be helpful, etc. You will need to clearly identify your audience when you hand in your final draft of this essay.

General Information:

One way to begin writing an evaluation is to identify the “standards” (or criteria) you will use. For example, we have discussed the question, “What are the qualities or characteristics of a ‘good book’?” The answers to this question will become our “standards.” Then, we can look at the book we will evaluate and assess how it “measures up” to the standards we have set.

Another way to begin is to make a “pro / con” chart listing what we find strong and weak about the book we will evaluate. Then, we can work backwards to identify the standards we will use based on what we liked or disliked about the book. One weakness with this approach is that the pro/con list might reflect our own personal preferences about writing, but might not reflect our audience’s standards.

When you write your thesis statement for your essay, remember that it should reflect your “position” or “judgment” about the book you are evaluating. And, when you work to identify reasons to support your judgment, remember that they should accurately state your standards and relate to your overall judgment. Sometimes it helps to brainstorm many possible ways to complete this statement (and then use the strongest reasons): Book X is a good (or bad) book because __________.

Finally, evaluations may be organized in various ways. The important thing is to include all essential parts:

In addition, you may want to arrange your reasons in some logical order: from most obvious to least obvious, most general to most technical, least convincing to most convincing, least important to most important. And, in argumentation and persuasion, it is often appropriate to “acknowledge and respond to the opposition” by admitting that your subject does have one or two weak (or strong) points -- you must do this in your essay. And, I will hand out and discuss another sheet showing various ways to organize an argumentative / persuasive essay.

Process and Due Dates:

We will go through the writing process for this essay, and you will be expected to demonstrate significant prewriting (e.g., brainstorming, etc.) and revision. Please see the course schedule for the due dates for the drafts. When you submit your final draft, you might be asked to also submit a folder containing all your prewriting exercises, your working drafts (in order), and your peer review notes. The final draft must have noticeable improvements over the first draft.

What You Will Be Graded On:

In initial drafts, I will be looking for you to state specific reasons for and against the book and to show (using textual support or evidence) and explain (using logical reasoning) to readers why you believe these things to be true -- and why they should believe them too. In the final draft you should also be addressing how they each relate to some over-arching main idea. I will be looking for interesting interpretations, thoughtful presentation and development, a consistent focus, and an on-going relationship between examples and main idea. The items below are common elements or criteria for evaluating an academic essay:

©2007 Scott Stankey / All rights reserved
Last revised on February 18, 2010 by SRS
Please address comments to scott.stankey@anokaramsey.edu