Kill the cereal box book reports

by Rosalie Howarth

My fifth-grader has never written a book report in which she actually wrote about the book she's read. Instead, she has been assigned various arts-and-crafts projects that are loosely inspired by the book.

In fourth grade she was issued two pieces of construction paper and instructed to paste them together, draw a picture of something from the book, cut various flaps in the top piece, and write on one the author's name, on another the publisher, the lead characters' names on a third, and why they liked the book on another. Nowhere did she write more than a flap's worth of words about the actual story.

The next book report assignment was multiple choice. The choices did not include writing a report. She chose the diorama, and molded clay models in a shoebox to represent a favorite scene from the book.

This year, the fifth graders had to design a TV commercial for their book. Their presentation was videotaped in class. They had to come up with slogans and plugs for the book that would "sell it" to a visual audience.

The last straw came with the next book report, which coined the phrase which concerned parents now use as a general term: the "cereal box" book report. My daughter was told to decide what her book would be called if it were a cereal. She had to paste paper over an actual empty cereal box, and draw on the front the name of the cereal, the genre of the book, and some zippy phrases. She was reminded: "Don't forget to draw the Caldecott Medal in gold!" The characters and plot were relegated to the slim sides of the box. On the back she was to put a puzzle or crossword using characters and locations in the book, and for extra credit she could include a token prize inside, in the manner of cereal boxes.

All very fun and creative, but this is not writing a book report. This is marketing.

These kids are about to go into middle school, and they have never written an actual book report. There is no discussion of the characters, the obstacles they face, and how they triumph over adversity. They are not required to identify plot elements, such as conflict, suspense, reversal, and climax. Eleven-year-olds could easily grasp these concepts if they were presented as "the problems the characters have and how they solve them," "twists and turns in the story," "can't wait to find out what's going to happen next," and "the big do-or-die battle at the end."

The students are expected to say why the writing is good without being taught any of the actual elements of a good story.

And, worst of all, they get absolutely no practice at writing, just a lot of coloring and paper pasting and clay-modeling. In recent published results, California students performed fourth from the bottom in standardized test scores in math and language arts. Last year poor scores in a districtwide writing assessment prompted the Mt. Diablo School Board to address a need to improve writing performance. And yet two parents of middle-school students, and one mother of a high school student, have told me that the "cereal box" book reports continue well into the upper grades!

I can understand why the students write poorly. They don't do much of it.

Finally, three months before graduating from elementary school, my daughter received a text book report assignment. However, half of it was comprised of "how the book relates to her", and "how the author's life relates to her". Again, there was little writing about the actual book, except, I was glad to see this time, a one-page summary of the plot.

This raises another concern I have about writing curriculum. I call it "All About Me." Perhaps in a misguided attempt to make books more relatable (although no ripping good yarn needs relatability exercises to keep a child's interest), we again and again turn the students' attention away from the actual people and events in the book, and inward toward themselves.

We are already raising one of the most self-absorbed generations in American history; can we not allow students to focus for one minute on how other people in other times have survived hard times with courage and character?

My daughter read an excellent, heartbreaking book on the Dust Bowl called Out of the Dust. She was amazed and horrified by how farming families lost everything in the Great Depression. Her assignment was to write about "how the main character relates to me", i.e what she and that character have in common. She came to me in confusion, because nothing in the book even remotely resembles anything in her life. The dust family was starving, while she has a refrigerator bursting with food. Their friends and relatives all moved away because of the drought; hers are with her every day. People were dying of "dust pneumonia"; her family is safe and healthy. But all she could think of to write about to satisfy the assignment was that the girl in the book had a little sister, and so does she.

So my daughter was about to focus about something utterly trivial rather than any of the revelations she gained from this excellent and challenging book, l because of the "All about ME" mindset of the curriculum. Does my daughter herself have to be the star of every book she reads?

In the end, we decided that she had almost nothing in common with the characters. They related to her in an inverse way, and she wrote about that. Good save; but we had to counter the curriculum to do it.

Everybody knows that the essay portion is often the deciding criterium in the college entry selection process. And yet most of the children I see in my daughter's class are incapable of writing an objective, two-page book report at the fifth-grade level, because they are prevented from doing so at every turn by the writing curriculum. Assigning pictures or crafts to accompany a written book report are fine at the elementary level, but please, let the children talk, in writing, about the wonderful books they are reading. Please kill the "cereal box" book reports!

Return to English 122 syllabus
Return to English 122 main page
Questions? Brian McKinney (bmckinne@home.com)