This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Reviewing the Reviews
Jun
19
2014
My son was interested in reading a particular book from the library. We were not familiar with the author nor the series, so I set out to learn something about it before giving our approval.
My normal source for age-appropriateness and objectionable-content reviews of books is Common Sense Media, but they did not have anything for this book. So I thought I would look up other reviews, such as at Goodreads or Amazon or other places that people review books.
One of the strengths of the internet is that anyone can join discussions and contribute things, i.e. crowdsourcing. Reviews should, and many times do, benefit from the myriad inputs.
But one of the weaknesses of the internet is that the quality of contributions vary wildly.
In this case, most of the reviews were worthless. Most of them were a star rating (mandatory), an expression of sorts (I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!), and then a plot summary (It was a very exciting book that starts with the such-and-such and then this happens and they have to figure out this thing, etc.) There were very few helpful reviews. The reviews that were helpful seemed to use the format of listing pros and cons.
An Open Letter to Book Reviewers
If there is already a plot summary of the book in the page content or in the other reviews on the page, then do not write your own plot summary.
Seriously, a book review page does not need dozens of plot summaries.
Give us your star ranking, some things you like about it, and some things you don’t like about it. What is your perspective of the book?
How about this: read five other comments and then make sure your comment/review is different from them. Do not duplicate anything from them.
Sincerely,
People who are trying to use the reviews
In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel saw a dream and visions in his mind as he lay on his bed; then he wrote the dream down and related the following summary of it.
Daniel 7:1
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:53 am and has been carefully placed in the Life category.
June 19th, 2014 at 9:42 am
This is exactly like the four other reviews of reviews I read.
June 20th, 2014 at 8:07 am
I see. And did you leave the same comment on the other sites?