Yeah, they look really good. DS wants to read Animal Farm this year. And the study guide looks like it will really help him understand the allegory of the novel, TNT be might not otherwise understand.
English major. Never did a book report in college. That said, I'm with one of the PPs. They are kind of a "gateway" thing, in that they "help" you look at the book, sort of a prep for character analyzation, symbols, etc. But so are the previously mentioned oral reports and hands on activities, which is what I was going to suggest. If you want to work on writing skills, you can always practice: - creativity - have him write himself in as a character for one of the scenes - character sketch - describe the main character, their actions, their history - setting - either write a story in the same setting (but dift story), or discuss why the setting is perfect for this story (imagine A Series of Unfortunate Events in medieval France, or on the moon, why wouldn't those work? what would be dift?) I tend to use nonfiction writing as field trip summaries or research ops. And I definitely wouldn't do a report on each individual book read. Love the cereal box report. And the commercial. "Buy two boxes and get a lifesize Titanic."
Christian Liberty Press sells a little handbook that teaches about character mapping (etc): http://www.christianlibertypress.com/proddetail.asp?prod=CLP29825&cat=38 I have it and have decided to pick one or two books per year for the kids to character map (etc.) and do book reports on.
