NUR2817C Nursing Roles PracticumCritical Book Review of Bed Number 10 by Sue Baier & Mary Zimmeth SchomakerHow to Write a Critical Book ReviewYou will write a 2-3-page critical book review in APA 7 th edition format. Your review has twogoals: first, to inform the reader about the content of the book, and second, to provide anevaluation that gives your judgment of the books quality.Your introduction should include an overview of the book which includes a short summary and asense of your general judgment. This is the equivalent to a thesis statement. Do not spend morethan one-fourth of the paper summarizing the book. The summary should consist of a discussionand highlights of the major themes, ideas, and characteristics of the book. While you may usedirect quotes from the book (make sure you always give the page number using the appropriateAPA in-text citation), such quotes should never be the bulk of the summary. Much of your gradewill depend on how well you describe and explain the material IN YOUR OWN WORDS.Throughout your summary, I want you to provide a critique of the book. A critique consists ofthoughts, responses, and reactions. It is not necessarily negative. The skills you need are anability to follow an argument and test a hypothesis. Regardless of how negative or positive yourcritique is, you need to be able to justify and support your position.Here are a number of questions that you can address as part of your critique. You need notanswer them all, but questions one and two are essential to any book review, so those must beincluded. And these are ABSOLUTELY NOT to be answered one after another. Dont have oneparagraph that answers one, and then the next paragraph that answers the next, etc. The answersshould be part of a carefully constructed essay, complete with topic sentences and transitions.1. What is your overall opinion of the book? On what basis has this opinion been formulated?That is, tell the reader what you think and how you arrived at this judgment. What did you expectto learn when you picked up the book? To what extent and how effectively were yourexpectations met? Did you nod in agreement (or off to sleep)? Did you wish you could talk backto the author? Amplify upon and explain your reactions.2. Identify the authors thesis and explain it in your own words. How clearly and in what contextis it stated and, subsequently, developed? To what extent and how effectively (i.e., with whatkind of evidence) is this thesis proven? Use examples to amplify your responses. If arguments orperspectives were missing, why do you think this might be?3. What are the authors aims? How well have they been achieved, especially with regard to theway the book is organized? Are these aims supported or justified? (You might look back at theintroduction to the book for help).4. What conclusions does the author reach and how clearly are they stated? Do these conclusionsfollow from the thesis and aims and from the ways in which they were developed? In otherwords, how effectively does the book come together?5. Identify the assumptions made by the author in both the approach to and the writing of thebook. For example, what prior knowledge does the author expect readers to possess? Howeffectively are those assumptions worked into the overall presentation? What assumptions doyou think should not have been made? Why?6. Does the authors presentation seem fair and accurate? Is the interpretation biased? Can youdetect any distortion, exaggeration, or diminishing of material? If so, for what purpose might thishave been done, and what effect does hit have on the overall presentation?Questions derived from Robert Blackey, Words to the Whys: Crafting Critical Book Reviews,The History Teacher, 27.2 (Feb. 1994): 159-66.Adapted from S. Zabin and retrieved fromhttps://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/history/resources/study/criticalbookreview/Submit your Critical Book Review Assignment:1) To Blackboard through Safe Assign A tool to Prevent Plagiarism. Submit your paper throughBlack Board under Week 8. SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention tool that allows yourinstructor to check the originality of a homework submission. SafeAssign automaticallyconducts the check by comparing your assignment against a database of other assignmentsubmissions.
