Book Review Guidelines

Western Folklore reviews of single volumes are generally 500 to 900 words long; combined reviews of two or more volumes may run to 1,200 words. The due date for a single review is usually six months, and commensurately farther off for a multiple review, nine months to a year. Reviewers requiring a longer deadline are welcome to arrange an extension with us.

We do not necessarily know how much experience a reviewer has at reviewing. Reviewers wishing advice and suggestions along the way are encouraged to stay in touch with Lisa Gabbert, the book-review editor at lisa.gabbert@usu.edu or (435) 797-2721 as work progresses. We are willing to work with reviewers on idea development, drafts, anything connected with the process.

Review guidelines: With due respect to reviewer intentions, reviewers are asked to consider the following areas (not necessarily all of these, not necessarily only these, and not necessarily in this order):

• audience
• purpose
• how well purpose is achieved
• use of scholarship
• comparison with similar works in the field
• uses to which this book might be put
• the place this book may eventually assume in the scholarly canon
• authorial style or attitude
• copyediting
• book design

A reviewer may be attracted to or repelled by a book, and you are welcome to express (tastefully) your personal response to it, and also to provide personal information if the inclusion of such information will serve to situate the reviewer vis-à-vis the subject matter of the book being reviewed.

Here is the format for heading a review. Note that the second and succeeding lines are indented:

Eskimo Drawings. Edited by Suzi Jones. (Anchorage: Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 2004. Pp. 208, foreword, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 paper)

At the end, your name goes flush right in all CAPITALS, followed by the name of your institution flush right in italics, then the name of your city flush right in italics:

SIMON POLINDER
Siskiyou State Academy
Weed, California

If you have cited other works in the review, add a Works Cited list after the signature block. Submit reviews in either WordPerfect or Microsoft Word format, double-spaced throughout, with standard margins, left-justification, and no pagination. Paste everything into an e-mail, attach the document, and transmit the whole to the book-review editor, Polly Stewart, at pxstewart@salisbury.edu, or by surface mail to:

Lisa Gabbert
Book Review Editor, Western Folklore
284 E. Kensington Ave.
Salt Lake City, UT 84115