Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover when Writing a Literature Term Paper
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover when Writing a Literature Term Paper
I had an after-school honors advanced writing class when I was in elementary school. It was not an mandatory class but extremely recommended. It was a pretty good class. For the first couple of weeks we did a ton of writing but we also did lots of reading. As I perused the reading list one book in particular caught my eye as being of little to no interest. There was a fairly pretty girl on the cover against a shipwrecked background in clothes that resembled the 1940’s. She had long tangled hair and dirty finger nails. I quickly read the back cover and determined I had little to no interest in this book. It looked plain boring. How was I going to write a literature term paper on this book.
I began skipping the after-school class making up a super lame excuse each time. I think my grandma passed away three times. I was sick at least twice and the last excuse was my mom wanted me home right after-school. I missed classes for at least two weeks. Soon my friend Kelly mentioned how my literature term paper was coming along. I couldn’t believe it was already due. I quickly grabbed the syllabus and noticed the term paper on this book was due in less than a week. For a brief second the thought occurred to me to buy a research paper online . That idea rapidly wore off. I ran to my shelf and pulled out the familiar looking book.
The first page was just as boring as ever but I pushed through. I knew there was no way I could get this elementary school term paper done in less than a week. To my surprise I plowed through the book and totally fell in love with it. It was extremely entertaining. It really was a great story and kept the me really engrossed.
I walked back in into the class the next day with all kinds of ideas and revelations I had arrived at when reading the book. The teacher was extremely surprised to see me. I was geared up to get some great ideas and feedback for my literature term paper from the other kids in the class. To my surprise the class had already moved on to the next book. I had no idea what book they were talking about nor could I participate in any of the discussion. I was livid.
My literature term paper turned out really well. The teacher did comment that she was rather sad I had missed so many classes but was really happy I enjoyed the book. I will never again judge a book by it’s cover or even the back jacket. To this day I am sad that I didn’t get to hear the other class mates interpretations before writing my research paper but it may have changed the way I read the book.
