Cafe Book Review Cards Download

In this download are 50 open-ended questions to help you have fun reviewing any story.

Simply cut along the dashed lines to create 50 cards.

If possible, print them onto card double sided, using the page 10 as the back for each page of cards.

If you would like to avoid using too much ink, there are simple versions of all the cards on pages 11-18.

For a Café Book Review, simply provide cakes and a nice drink for everyone. You could buy or bake cake to create a Café At Home, or visit a cafe. Get comfortable and use these questions to chat about a storybook you have recently finished.

Use the six cards on page 9 to invent your own questions. You might want to wait until you have used some of the questions before adding your own.

The cards are colour coded.

You could pick one from each colour, do one colour at a time, choose your favourites or randomly.

Reds = simple starter questions

Orange = exploring characters

Yellow = look at plot.

Green = explore locations

Purple = explore publishing decisions

Pinks = look at themes

Blue = ask about your responses

These cards are a lovey way to review books together, as well as films and other stories. I first developed them when my children were 5 and 7, and we used them to review The Wild Robot at a local cafe. Then during lock down we developed Cafe Book Review at home, so we made our own cakes and chatted about books using these simple, open-ended questions.

As they got older, I gamified it, so one person picks a card and gives it to someone else to read and choose someone else to answer. Everyone then gets a chance to answer before the answer-er reads the next question and chooses the next answer-er.

We still do hot chocolate and cake. It works. Try it and see!