Booktalking Magic
Lake Villa District Library
Teacher Workshop
Rachel Reinwald, MSLIS
What is a Booktalk?
“A booktalk is a commercial designed to get
someone to read a book. It is a way of ‘selling’
your merchandise, a performance to get the
audience excited about your book.” – Institute of
Museum and Library Services
Appeal Terms
Appeal Terms: adjectives that effectively convey a reader’s reaction to certain
elements of a book. The reason? They allow us to move away from plot
summaries and help us to connect seemingly disparate titles by determining their
common appeal.
Character
Pace
Storyline
Tone
Illustration
Writing Style
Audio
Character
“’George,’ I croaked, ‘are you okay?’
‘No. Someone’s buttocks are flattening my foot.’
I shifted my position irritably. ‘I meant the plasm –
where you got hit.’
‘Oh. Yes. Thank you. It didn’t touch my hand, though
I think this jacket is ruined.’
‘That’s good. It’s an awful jacket. Who’s got a
flashlight? I just dropped mine.’” (pp. 309-310)
Read-alikes: The Graveyard Book (Gaiman), The Night Gardener (Auxier),
Jackaby (Ritter)
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Horror
Action-packed
Plot-driven
Witty, Snarky
Sarcastic
Banter-filled
Character trios
Flawed char.
Dynamic char.
Intricate plot
Mischievous
Intensifying pace
Creepy
Humorous
Character
“Mr. Ferris looked at me for a second and then said, ‘Let’s all sit
down and get started,’ except that I turned and walked out. He
came to the door and called after me, and I started running.
So did he.
We reached the front doors of Washington Irving Junior High
School at the same time.
He grabbed the bar handle so I couldn’t open it.
He grabbed the bar handle of the next door so I couldn’t open it.
And the next.
I reared back and hit him in the stomach as hard as I could. I
know: After School Detention for Life. Didn’t care.
He grabbed my arm. (So I was crying by now. So what? So what?)
He walked me across the school lobby. Slammed through the
auditorium doors. Shouted to the Washington Irving Junior High
School Brass Quintet that they’d have to go practice…” (144-146)
Read-alikes: The Paper Cowboy (Levine), The Wednesday Wars
(Schmidt), Shooting the Moon (Dowell), Love Aubrey (LaFleur)
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Historical fiction
Character-driven
Moving
Brooding
Relatable
Leisurely-paced
Heart-wrenching
Engaging
Accessible
Storyline
“They clustered around Boots eagerly, waving their antennas
in the air and shuddering in delight. Boots, who loved any kind
of compliment, instinctively knew she was being admired. She
stretched out her chubby arms to the giant insects. ‘I poop,’
she said graciously, and they gave an appreciative hiss.
‘Be she princess, Overlander, be she? Be she queen,
be she?’ asked the leader, dipping its head in slavish devotion.
‘Boots? A queen?’ asked Gregor. Suddenly he had to
laugh. (p. 19)
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Fantasy
World-building
Action-packed
Character-driven
Fast-paced
Suspenseful
Descriptive
Well-crafted
dialogue
Emotionallyintense
Read-alikes: The City of Ember (DuPrau), Redwall (Jacques), Warriors (Hunter), Keys to
the Kingdom (Nix), The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton)
Storyline
Read-alikes: The Diabolic (Kincaid), Stitching Snow (Lewis), A Long,
Long Sleep (Sheehan), For Darkness Shows the Stars (Peterfreund)
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Science fiction
Intricately plotted
Intensifying
Ability diverse
Large cast
Sarcastic
Strong women
Complex plot & style
Culturally diverse
Atmospheric
Emotionally intense
Romantic
Compelling
Well-crafted
dialogue
Pacing
“His short flight across the junkyard ended with a bone-shattering
crash as the crane deposited the car on the iron shelves of the
crusher. Alex tried to fight back his sickness and despair and think
of what to do. Any moment now the operator would send the car
tipping into the coffin-shaped trough… The car, with Alex inside it,
would be crushed beyond recognition. And the broken metal-and
flesh- would then be chopped into sections. Nobody would ever
know what had happened.
He tried with all his strength to free himself. But the roof was too
low. His leg was trapped. Then his whole world tilted and he felt
himself falling into darkness. The shelves had lifted. The BMW slid
to one side and fell the few yards into the trough. Alex felt the
metal-work collapsing all around him. The back window exploded
and glass showered around his head, dust and diesel fumes
punching into his nose and eyes.” (p. 18)
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Spy
Action-packed
Plot-driven
Static
characters
Likeable
Courageous
Suspenseful
Compelling
Read-alikes: Maximum Ride (Patterson), The Specialists: Model Spy (Greenland)
Pacing
(after Ada accidentally broke the sewing machine) “’Tomorrow you
can practice,’ Susan said. ‘No thank you,’ I said. She pulled me close
to her, in a sort of one-armed embrace. ‘Why did you hid? Why
were you under the bed?’ Jamie had been hovering the entire time.
‘Mam puts her in the cabinet,’ he said, ‘whenever she’s really bad.’
‘But why put yourself there, Ada? You didn’t have to.’ So I can stay.
SoIcanstaysoIcanstaysoIcanstay. ‘I’m not going to shut you up
anywhere, no matter what, okay?’ ‘Okay.’ My stomach felt awful. My
voice sounded very small. I could barely make my mind stay in the
room with Susan and Jamie. I said, ‘I know I have to leave. Please,
can Jamie come too?’ ‘Ada!’ Oh no. Ohnoohnoohno. Without Jamie I
would die. ‘I’m not going to send you away. Why would I send you
away? You made a mistake. A little, small mistake.’ Now both Susan’s
arms were around me. I tried to squirm free. She held me tighter.
‘Did you really think I would send you away?’ I nodded.” (p.173)
Read-alikes: One For the Murphy’s (Hunt), Waiting For
Normal (Connor), The Little Ships (Borden), Lizzie and the
Lost Baby (Blackford), My Family For the War (Voorhoeve)
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Historical fiction
Ability diverse
Complex
Flawed character
Sympathetic
Character-driven
Leisurely-paced
Emotional
Bleak
Candid
Engaging
Well-crafted
dialogue
Tone
(Molly hears noises and goes to investigate) “Molly left the door as
it was. She could not help but think about the man in the fog.
Perhaps Kip really had seen someone. Perhaps it was a prowler,
come to rob the Windsors. Molly wondered whether her lamp
might draw attention. She set it on the sideboard and picked up
the heaviest candlestick she could find, just to be safe.
She crept up the staircase, weapon clenched in both
hands. Gusts of wind swept past her, pulling at her nightgown and
hair. She reached the top of the stairs and heard a faint creaking
sound. The little green door was open again, moving slightly in the
wind. Molly felt a prickle of excitement. She walked toward the
door, but then another sound stopped her – “ (p.71)
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Horror
Fast-paced
Lyrical
Attentiongrabbing
• Dialect-filled
• Plot-driven
• Scary
Read-alikes: The Screaming Staircase (Stroud), Coraline (Gaiman), The Nest (Oppel),
The Seer of Shadows (Avi), The Hunt for the Seventh (Shaw)
Tone
“My name is Charlie Joe Jackson, and I hate reading. And
if you’re reading this book, you hate reading, too.
In fact, you do whatever you can to avoid
reading, and the fact that you’re holding a book in your
hand right now is kind of shocking.
I know exactly how you feel; I’m one of you.
Just remember: you are not alone. We’ll get
through this together.” (p.3)
Read-alike: Dork Diaries (Russel), Big Nate (Peirce), Ungifted
(Korman), The Loser List (Kowitt), That Hate U Give (Thomas)
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Realistic fiction
Humorous
Sarcastic
Mischievous
Dynamic
character
Character-driven
Leisurely-paced
Short chapters
Irreverent
Banter-filled
Conversational
Notebook design
Writing Style
“And then I thought about what was right there in the text. Ralph
Ellison talking about invisibility. Not the wacky science fiction kind,
but the kind where people are looking at you but not seeing you,
looking through you, or around you – like, why the hell shouldn’t
our classes be talking about what happened to Rashad? Was what
happened to him invisible? Was he invisible?
[class starts reading Battle Royale; some students refuse to say the
racial slurs in the short story]
But here are the words that kept ricocheting around me all day:
Nobody says the words anymore, but somehow the violence still
remains. If I didn’t want the violence to remain, I had to do a hell
of a lot more than just say the right things and not say the wrong
things.” (pp. 215-218)
Read-alikes: How It Went Down (Magoon), The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-Time Indian (Alexie), Bright Lights, Dark Nights (Emond)
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Realistic fiction
Authentic
Complex
Courageous
Culturallydiverse
Introspective
Relatable
Issue-oriented
Leisurely-paced
Hopeful
Moving
Sobering
Accessible
Candid
Writing Style
“If your teacher has to die, August isn’t a bad time of year for it.
You know August. The corn is earring. The tomatoes are
ripening on the vine. The clover’s in full bloom. There’s a little
less evening now, and that’s a warning. You want to live every
day twice over because you’ll be back in the jailhouse of school
before the end of the month. Then our teacher, Miss Myrt
Arbuckle, hauled off and died. It was like a miracles, though she
must have been forty. You should have seen my kid brother’s
face. It looked like Lloyd was hearing the music of spheres.
Being ten that summer, he was even more willing to believe in
miracles than I was.” (p. 3)
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Read-alikes: The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (Philbrick),
Dead End in Norvelt (Gantos)
Historical fiction
Character-driven
Leisurely-paced
Heartwarming
Funny
Nostalgic
Sassy
Spirited
Sweet
Well-crafted
dialogue
Short/Spare
phrases
What is a Book Review?
A good review will briefly describe the contents, scope, and style of a book;
critically assess its quality; and suggest its potential audience.
Descriptive: Objective statements about the characters, plot, theme, or
illustrations.
Analytical: Statements about literacy and artistic elements, including
evaluation, comparison, and mention of contributions to the field.
Sociological: Judgements based on nonliterary considerations, such as
potential controversial elements or predictions about popularity.
Chapter Book Example
Oppel, Kenneth. The Nest.
244 p. Simon & Schuster. 2015. Tr $16.99.
ISBN 9781481432320.
Gr 5-7 – Steven’s new baby brother isn’t quite right. He is always being rushed to the hospital and his
parents are exchanging looks and whispering behind closed doors. Summer is supposed to be fun, but
his family is pretty anxious, especially Steven, who washes his hands and makes lists and sleeps with
the covers over his head with a small breathing hole. His sister insists on eating lunch outside where
they discover it is a bad season for wasps. They spot a wasps nest growing by the baby’s window,
Steven is stung and finds out he’s allergic, and the wasps start invading Steven’s dreams, offering to fix
the baby if he agrees. And Steven does agree, but he’s not exactly sure what to. What follows is a
terrifying horror story that quickens its pace as Steven’s hysteria grows.
Readers will empathize with Steven’s protective rituals in the face of nightmarish horrors. The language
is straightforward, but the plainness of it lends to the creepiness. The themes of grief and helplessness
are portrayed subtly through Steven’s OCD, his nightmares, and the state of the baby’s health. With
similar themes and monsters to A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (Candlewick 2013) and parallel horror
in The Night Gardener (Amulet 2014), The Nest is a read-alike that tops them both in concise but
effective text and a solid feel for the mood. VERDICT: A first purchase thrilling for anyone but especially
for reluctant readers because of its short length and high octane.
Picture Book Example
Marino, Gianna. Night Animals.
34 p. Viking. 2015. Tr $16.99.
ISBN 9780451469540.
PreS-Gr 2 – Possum is hiding in a tree from the scary noises that are night animals. One by one, more
night animals join the mass hysteria as more and more bright, white eyeballs appear in the night. Each
successive animal is larger than the next, but still afraid of night animals until Bat scolds them by telling
them they are night animals. After this realization, camping humans are added to the mix and both
parties go running for their lives. This simple yet hilarious story in gouache and ink full page spreads
render a setting of a dark and scary forest expertly with a black background and only the bottoms of tall,
barren trees or a frame of a wooded hollow where the animals hide. Readers can tell the exaggerated
moods of the cartoonish yet realistically textured animals by the shape of their eyes, disembodied and
expression-filled in the blackness. The store is told entirely in speech bubbles and onomatopoeias
emanating from their feral origins, with the side story of possum and skunks relationship told entirely in
pictures. Possum keeps passing out (in true dead possum style) from fear and skunk’s petrified stench,
and skunk is dragging his wounded friend by the tail so he doesn’t get left behind. The story continues
onto the endpapers.
VERDICT – A great read aloud for any age, kids will be rolling on the floor laughing while relating to fear
of darkness and the unknown, and learning about nocturnal animals and some of their mannerisms.
Good v. Okay
The Girl Who Drank the Moon
The Wishing World
Plot
Plot: a series of events that tell the story, actions that are linked by cause and
effect, so that the pieces of the story are all tied together by a narrative.
Narrative Structure
• Chronological order
• Flashbacks
Conflict
• Character v. character
• Character v. nature
• Character v. society
• Character v. self
o Episodic
o Progressive
o Suspense, cliffhangers, and foreshadowing
o open ending
o Parallel structure
Plot
Girl Who Drank the Moon
• Flashbacks
• Every type of conflict
• Parallel structures:
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Luna (girl)
Antain (Protectorate boy)
(Protectorate man)
Sister – (woman)
Xan (“witch” in the woods)
The Wishing World
• Episodic
• Character v. character
• Action-based, only conflict,
hardly any character
development
Character Development
Through character development the author reveals complexity by showing us
how characters think, act, and feel, so that readers get a sense of a real, threedimensional person. (static v. dynamic)
• Appearance
• Action
• Thought
• Dialogue
• Comments of others
• Narration
Not all characters in a story need to be equally well developed for the novel to
succeed as good fiction.
Char. Dev.
• Xan rescues babies instead of being
an evil witch.
• The Protectorate head sister is
actually the evil witch because she
thrives on the sadness of people
giving up their babies.
• Fyrian is a tiny dragon that thinks he
is huge because he’s never seen
another dragon (comic relief)
• Antain questions society and is the
hero. Rewarded with good wife, also
rejected from Protectorate in pursuit
of truth (major theme)
• Multiple characters are dynamic
So many extra strange
characters were added to
entertain the reader, that the
development should have been
on the main character instead.
She barely changes and she
does so through a static
antagonist, which isn’t logical.
The other characters are all
static and almost fake seeming.
They don’t push other
characters to develop.
http://www.slaphappylarry.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/point_of_view_mindmap.jpg
Point of View
3rd person limited
omniscient. Adds suspense
because you know what’s
coming because of the
other characters.
Each scene is from a
different person’s distinct
perspective:
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Xan
Fyrian
Glerk
Luna
Antain
Head Elder
Sister Ignatia
Madwoman
First person.
Shows a change in how the
character thinks but limits the
reader from knowing her way
of thinking is wrong at first.
This could be a good or bad, I
don’t think it was that well
done because the change in
character development
seems to come from nowhere
and inappropriate characters
to give Lorelai this lesson (the
antagonist teaches her even
though he is still bad and is a
static character).
Setting
Backdrop
Integral
• Clarifying conflict
• Antagonist
• Illuminate
character
• Symbolic
Setting
• The bog, volcano, and the
dangerous forest that
divides the towns are
integrral to the action and
the characters and also
serve as symbols.
• The stars and moon feed
Luna and other magical
character’s powers and
set up the initial problem.
• The description of setting
is vivid and lyrical.
• The settings seem like
they are meant to
impress the reader rather
than play into the story
(with the exception of the
evil character being
buried in the sea realm,
but that has almost no
detail). And the plot
didn’t make up for this.
Style
Imagery: the use of words that appeal to any of the senses.
Figurative Language: the use of words in a nonliteral way.
• Personification: nonhuman objects or animals are invested
with human characteristics.
• Simile: comparison of two dissimilar things using “like” or “as”
• Metaphors: implied comparisons
Hyperbole: the use of exaggeration.
Sound devices:
• Alliteration: repetition of initial consonants
• Assonance: repetition of similar vowel sounds
• Consonance: close repetition of consonant sounds
• Onomatopoeia: words that sound like their meanings
Style (cont.)
Rhythm: the pattern of words in a sentence, which
gives it a particular flow, or cadence.
Allusion: reference to literature or historical events
that are part of our common cultural heritage.
Diction: using words and grammatical structures
native to the story’s setting and characters (dialect).
Tone: the reflection of the author’s attitude toward
the story. (The feeling evoked from reading a story.
See Appeal Terms.)
Style
Moon: metaphor of volcano taking life
and presenting a suspenseful timeline
and the bog as life-giving and all
encompassing. Everything essential to
life came from bog and it is threatened.
This book has a lot of rhythm in it’s
sentence structure and sound devices.
And both Fyrian and the Madwoman
have a distinct way of talking (diction)
that adds to the meaning. We learn that
Fyrian is child-like and the Madwoman
speaks in riddles that seem crazy, but
lead to the truth.
The plot is cyclical and there are a lot of
sets of threes.
There was a lot of imagery,
but it was confusing, there
was too much to process, it
was more to entertain the
reader and divert from lack
of plot points. The imagery
did not add to the theme or
development of characters.
The most meaningful
imagery was the antagonist
being an inky black creature
and living in the depths of
the ocean where he causes
a sea storm while upset.
There was the metaphor of
the magic pen writing
dreams into reality, but too
obvious, it was literal.
Theme
• A significant truth that lies just beneath the surface of
the story.
• Is a big, overarching idea
• Usually has to be inferred
• Can usually be found by asking ourselves, “What did
the main character learn?” “What is the story really
about?”
• Is different from a topic (which is specific to a certain
book/story)
• That there can be many themes in a story
Theme
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Storytelling
Societal control
Truth is powerful
Bad people feed
on misery
• People can believe
in fake stories
Themes were woven
beautifully into the
story and were
cyclical.
• It is tempting to be
selfish
• Bad people can start
off good
• Family is the most
important
Themes were too obvious.