Free Book Reports

Looking at the “webstats” for my website, I’ve noticed that for the past three years the single most popular page (other than the home page) has been the free book reports. Why is the book reports page so popular? I’ve never done anything to promote them, and the link to them is not prominently featured on my home page. How are people getting there?

The answer is revealed in the webstats, which list the key words used in Google searches that lead to the book reports page.

Imagine yourself at age fourteen. It is 2:20 a.m. You have been playing World of Warcraft for three hours. Your book report on Godless is due in six hours, and somehow you never quite finished reading the book. Time to get creative! What do you type into Google?

godless pete Hautman book report

And what pops up first on the search results?

Score!

Except…Pete Hautman’s book reports turn out to be not all that good. I would love to know if any of them have ever made it to a teacher’s desk.