Nontraditional Nonfiction Monday: What Do I Do?

On May 24th I’ll be hosting Nonfiction Monday (click here for a description). I thought it would be fun to call it Nontraditional Nonfiction Monday and challenge bloggers to review a book in a different way. In case you missed it, here’s the video announcement:

So, the question arises – how to go about this nontraditional review? Here are some ideas:

• Create a cartoon review. I’m partial to the comic-creating website Bitstrips, but you can also try the very nice looking Make Beliefs Comix. Click here to check out my Toon Review of One Crazy Summer for ideas.

• Get in character and write a review from a different perspective. Reviewing a book about trees? Write it from the perspective of a tree. I did something along these lines when I reviewed The Curious Garden from the perspective of the book’s message (yeah, not making much sense – click here to see what I mean).

• Write a flow chart review. The excellent Art of Irreverence blog created one of these a while back, and the results were nothing short of winning. Click here to read it.

• Two words: animated review. I’ve been wanting to try this out, but haven’t worked up the vim. Go! Animate is the site to create your masterpiece.

• Have your review mirror the style of the book. It is a poetry book? Write a poem review. Is it a how-to guide? Write a how-to review. I tried something like this with my review of Show Off.

• Try your hand at a video review. You can get fancy and make it all movie-like, of you can just turn on your camera and let us know what you think.

• For aspiring children’s lit Willie Nelsons, write a song review. I’m teaming up with the blog Hi Miss Julie! to do exactly this. Grab your guitar, piano, or Garageband and give it a try.

• Here’s a challenge. Write a Twitter review. Trying to describe a book in 140 characters will have you driving yourself crazy in no time.

• Recruit a friend/colleague and try a tag-team review. One book – two perspectives. The Booklist blog Bookends is a great example of this.

“Hold your horses”, you say? Too crazy? No problem – anything out of your reviewing norm will work. And of course, standard reviews are also welcome.

Do you have other nontraditional review ideas? Share them in the comments.

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