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When we talk about a book’s genre, we mean the type or kind of book it is.

There are lots of different genres.

In fiction texts (ones that have been made up from a writer’s imagination) you might find genres such as science fiction (��ٳ���-�ھ�’), fairy stories, adventure stories and mysteries.

Watch this short video to see some examples of genre.

Each genre has its own style and set of rules. You wouldn't usually expect to find magic spells in a crime story, for example, or a robot in a fairy story!

But how do you know what genre a book is? Watch this video in which teacher Mrs Shaukat shows you how to use clues to spot the genre of a fiction text. Listen carefully and join in with the activities as you watch!

Some stories can include more than one genre. A story could contain elements of sci-fi and adventure, or myths and scary stories.

Before you read a book, you can find clues about its genre by reading the title, the blurb on the back of the book or by reading a short extract from within the book.

There are also genres in non-fiction books. For example, recipe books, instruction manuals, history books and biographies.

These books also follow their own styles and sets of rules. You wouldn’t expect to see a list of instructions in a history book, for instance, or lots of dates and names in a recipe book!

How good are you at working out the genre of a book just by reading a few sentences?

Have a go at this quiz to test your skills so far!

Now it’s time to try the sorting activity Mrs Shaukat describes in the Teacher Talk video from 04:39 to 05:19.

Here are some ideas which could appear in a story:

• A story set in space

• A ghost moving things around

• A prince kissing a princess

• A monster hiding under the bed

• A character talking to animals

• An alien invasion

You need to sort them into the story types shown in the table below.

You could copy the table out onto some paper and write the features out into the correct column.

Remember: Some features may fit into more than one genre.

An event or specific situation in a story could be written about in lots of different ways, depending on the story’s genre. This is because genre affects a story’s style.

1. Click on the image to the right to see an example of the same event in a story being told in three different genres.

Read through the texts carefully and think about how the writer has made each one fit its particular genre.

What clues do they give to help you to imagine what's taking place?

2. Over to you! Look at the table below. Write sentences to describe the story events in the two genres that are shown next to them. Write at least two sentences for each one.

Choose words carefully that will suit your genre, to make it really clear to the reader. Think of interesting characters and places, as well as good adjectives, metaphors or similes to describe them.

The paragraph about wolves below should have been written as an adventure story, but the author wrote it for an information book by mistake!

Read the paragraph carefully and think about how you could rewrite it to change the genre.

Wolves hunt in packs of around five to eight animals, but packs can be much bigger than that. A wolf has 42 teeth. Wolves live in family groups in a den, and they can run at 40 miles per hour (as fast as a horse!) over short distances. Wolves howl to communicate. A wolf's howl can carry for many miles.

For example, the information 'Wolves hunt in packs of around five to eight animals' could be rewritten as:

As the moon rose high above the mountains, the soft sound of five wolves setting out to hunt whispered in the still night air.

Now you have a go! Choose three other facts and rewrite them in the style of an adventure story.

You could use some of these sentence starters to help you:

• Just then…
• All of a sudden…
• Turning around, she/he…
• In the distance, they…
• Out of nowhere, a…
• After a while, it…