Writing Book Reports about Vampire Literature

Too many of my students when I assign a book report, summary, or review focus entirely on convincing me that they liked the book. When asked why, I will hear something like, "It was just really good." Okay. "Why was it good? What part of it made you think that?" And honestly, they haven't got a clue.

I don't know about you, but as an author I would like my book to get a bit more play-up. I would like them to wax poetic on the depth of my characters, be able to say the ways in which the setting really made them feel like they were on that hilltop being surrounded by hungry vampires, and my description of the frigid, icy fingers of wind running down the back of the neck made them shiver. But I get, "great book."

And sadly, too often, the title is "book report," and the first line something like, "I was assigned a book report, and didn't have any idea which book I wanted to choose, but I looked around and the very shortest was about vampires attacking villagers on a mountain somewhere. So that was the one i (sic) picked." This is an entire back story that is both boring, unnecessary, and definitely unwelcome. It smacks of padding, which wastes my unpaid time, and tells me that in the student's mind, I am too stupid to recognize padding when I read it. Just begin the darn essay, please.

A variant on that theme is the title Varney the Vampyre. The first line will invariably be "This book report is about Varney the Vampyre." Note that the title of their report and the title of the book are the same. Acceptable if you are a fifth-grader (maybe), but not for a college level response. We need a unique title to our paper.We do not "borrow (read steal) from others in formal classes. And, by the way, book titles are italics, and story titles published by others are inside quotations. Titles for our papers are not bold, not underlined, not some fancy huge unreadable font. Yes. I do feel strongly about that.

Moving on. What is the rock bottom necessary for every single book report? Please include:

• The title of the book, story, poem

• The author of the book

• Some statement of the time period in which the book is placed -- if it is set in the twenty-fourth century, say so.

• Where is the story/plot set?

• The names of major characters and short descriptions of them , and their relevance to the plot

• A SHORT summary of the plot, unless the assignment IS a plot summary. I have usually read the book -- many times. I ask that my students get beyond a simple plot statement and demonstrate higher level reading/understanding than that.

With any sort of book report, a short summary of the plot is indeed necessary. First, it convinces the instructor you haven't just watched the film, or listened to class discussions. To get beyond the plot, you need to attempt some advanced thought. You need to come up with an approach to the book/story/poem. Is your interest in a critical approach? Could you enumerate the ways in which Kipling, in his poem, proves that humans are "fools" for giving their all to people who aren't asking for it, and who aren't reciprocating the care? Think about it for a moment. Would you read the poem differently if you were looking for "proof" of that statement than you would if you were reading it to "prove" the woman is a taker? You would definitely hit different points.Take a look at the some of the approaches beyond this page.

When you are writing your book report, you might decide to write a character analysis. You could focus on the ways in which the characters interact with each other, and the ways in which they drive the plot forward. The plot of Kipling's poem, for instance, is totally driven by the interaction between the man and the woman. Ask yourself also how the word choices set the tone and the characters.

Literature and film with vampire characters invariably are raising some major topical themes. It is your job, as a student, to write an essay that recognizes this. For instance, they raise:

• life versus death

• death versus undeath

• blood as salvational for a vampire versus the traditional complicated view of blood -- it "is the life."

• souls or unsouls

I am sure if I spend five minutes, I could come up with a whole lot more, but that is YOUR job as a student.

It is important to remember that you must be able to prove each and every statement from the text itself. Your own opinion really matters only to you when I am reading the paper.

By now you are asking yourself why you have been asked to do all this? We wish you to learn to summarize what someone else has said, to demonstrate your clear understanding of it, and then have you interact lucidly with it. It's what you pay us to ask you to do, and we don't want to steal from you.