Book Connections

Compare two books

Compare the book you have just finished with another one like it. Shared things go in the middle, and what belongs only to one book goes on its own side — which is much harder than it sounds.

Comparing across books, not inside one. It needs both books held in mind at once.

The middle is the difficult half. Differences are easy; a real similarity takes evidence.

Prints a blank map. Ready to fill in by hand.

Build it on the whiteboard · printing a blank map is free

The sheet it prints

The printable book connections sheet — a blank map for comparing two books.

How do you compare two books?

Comparing two books means setting them side by side and deciding what belongs only to the first, what belongs only to the second, and what they genuinely share. Book Connections lays that out in the shape often called a double bubble map — two subject circles with the shared ideas held between them. Thinking Maps® is a registered trademark of Thinking Maps, Inc.; this is our own sheet, not theirs.

What can you compare with it?

Two books by the same author. A book and the film of it. The opening and the ending of one novel. A fiction and a non-fiction text on the same subject. The last one is the most useful and the least used — comparing how a story and an information text handle the same topic is where children notice authorial choice.

How is it different from a Venn diagram?

A Venn diagram puts the shared ideas in an overlap, so the space for them is fixed by the geometry. This gives the shared ideas their own row of bubbles down the middle, which means you can add as many as you find. If you want the tighter, more disciplined version, use the Venn diagram instead.

How do you run it on the whiteboard?

Name both texts first and write them in. Fill the outer bubbles quickly — children are fast at differences. Then stop and work only on the middle for the rest of the lesson. A shared idea that neither text states outright is worth three that both do.

How do you make it harder or easier?

To start, compare two things a class knows inside out and accept single words. Then require a piece of evidence for anything placed in the middle. The hardest version is comparing a text with itself — chapter one against the last chapter — because the differences are the whole plot and the similarities are the theme.

From the classroom

The trap is books that are too different. Give a class two texts with nothing in common and the middle stays empty, which teaches them that the middle is the optional bit. Pick two that are obviously related — two books by the same author, or a book and its film — and the middle fills so fast you have to start asking for evidence to slow it down. That is the version worth running. The other thing worth doing: fill in one outer side yourself before they start. It sets the size of the thing you are asking for, and it stops the first three entries being one word each.

Try it now

Put a book and its film adaptation up. The outer bubbles fill themselves — then ask what the film had to keep, and why that thing could not be cut.