Young Writers Society

The book that I read for my first book report was Captain’s Courageous. At first the book seemed boring, but when I got into it I liked it. The author is Ruyard Kipling and it was published in 1897. It is of the fiction genre.

Harvey Cheyne Jr. is a snobby, stuck-up 15-year-old boy. He’s is forced to become more humble when, on a trip on a steam ship, he’s pitched into a small fishing dory. By the end of the book Harvey has learned how to fish, he’s much more humble, has many new friends, and is very nice and friendly. He’s a much happier boy at the end.

This novel takes place in the fishing boat We’re Here. Most of the book is on We’re Here, but at other times it takes place in Harvey’s friend’s dory Hattie S.. I like when the setting is the We’re Here because many exciting things happen. When on the We’re Here they (the crew and Harvey): watch a ship sink, rescue a seaman, trade with French sailors, and have two shouting fights with other ships (which are really fun).

The theme in this story is the somewhat common one of self-transformation. Harvey Cheyne Jr. is forced to change his personality so that he will be able to get along with the crew of the We’re Here fishing boat. Another reason for his surprising and fast personality change is because of all the good influences around him. All the crew on the We’re Here are good people and are very kind. This story tells a lot about Harvey’s courage, his change, and the interesting stories of all the fishermen on the We’re Here. I learned that sometimes there are necessary changes that you have to make in your life. Most of the time, they’ll make you a stronger/better person.

At first I thought that Captain’s Courageous was a very boring book. With the main character’s personality changing in the first two chapters (a little strange in my experiences) and the setting being the same throughout the majority of the book, it was a little uneventful. Then, I began to realize and appreciate the small adventures that Harvey Cheyne Jr. and his friends on the We’re Here had. Watching a ship sink, trading with another vessel, accidentally pulling a dead man up from his watery grave; it all started to become more fun for me. I think that, after you get used to this book you can enjoy it. Also, another good point about it was that it was really quite believable. The ending was somewhat predictable but it kind of caught me by surprise. To conclude, I think I’d have to say that I did like Captain’s Courageous; it was a great read and deserves to be called a ‘Classic’.

All right, so here's my review:

Paragraph 1: You might want to rephrase "somewhat boring, but towards the end..." Like, you could say it took a while to get into or something.

Paragraph 2: You should put what happens before you put how it changed Harvey's character. Before you mention how he "quickly changed his attitude" mention how he fell off his cruise boat and was rescued by the crew of the We're Here. And in the last sentence, when you're mentioning how he's changed, you might want to say WHY he changed, like the crew of the We're Here taught him valuable lessons etc. And since the character change is more important of than the fishing bit, you might want to put it first.
I'm not sure if you're supposed to italicize a ship's name or underline it, but I think you're supposed to do something. Might want to look it up.

Paragraph 3: You could just say the main setting is the We're Here, and maybe add the Hattie S., but you don't have to list every place. Also, tell why you think the We're Here is exciting.

Paragraph 4: Don't use and/or or stronger/better. For the first sentence you could just phrase it "The theme in this story is the somewhat common one of self-transformation. And is he really forced to change his personality, or does he do it because he's learning new things?

Last Paragraph: For this paragraph, you're talking about what you personally thought of the book, right? I like how you started out with your initial reaction, but then how you started getting really caught up in the story. I especially liked how you used examples from the story, like the shipwreck and stuff. You might want to change the second sentence a little though, because you're saying how boring it was, but then you mention the MC's personality change, which doesn't sound that boring at all, to me, the reader. You might want to rephrase that bit, to show more of why you thought it was boring, like how the setting was staying the same. Also, you might want to rephrase the last sentence, because the last thing I'm thinking about is how much you didn't like it (at the beginning).

You should totally use examples like you did in the last paragraph more often, because it's like a window into the book, a quick glimpse. It helps me to see what the book's really like.
I liked how completely thorough you were in this review- you covered everything. The only thing is, try to make it less of a list, like when you were listing all the settings.
All in all, you did a very thorough good job. Keep up the good work!


p.s. You should see the movie now- the one starring Freddy Bartholomew and Spencer Tracy. It's not like the book that much, but I liked it a lot better.

Starhunter was quite thorough in his review, and I second everything he said.

I have to admit, the last paragraph was my favorite. All the mentions of the small events inside the story made it interesting and, as Starhunter said, gave us a good peek into what made the book so good.

I do have some advice of my own, however, concerning your first paragraph:

The book that I read for my first book report was Captain’s Courageous. At first the book seemed boring, but when I got into it I liked it. The author is Ruyard Kipling and it was published in 1897. It is of the fiction genre.

This first paragraph is all over the place and not very interesting to read. The first sentence only acts as a hook if we care about are a captive audience to you giving a book report. There's also the matter of how the only thing we learn in that sentence about the book is its name.

If you restructure your first paragraph, you can make it more informative in less space, which could open up the possibility of including even more information, like something interesting about the author or the story behind his writing the book. And if you've read other books by the same author, you can mention that in the introduction as well to make comparisons.

Lastly, I'm pretty sure the title is Captains Courageous without the apostrophe. The title comes from the first line of a ballad about Mary Ambree, and if you take a look at the second line, you'll find that the "captains" refer to several captains rather than just one captain owning courageous somethings:

WHEN captains couragious, whom death could not daunte,
Did march to the siege of the citty of Gaunt,

Overall though, this was a pretty good review.