Family-friendly Reading
Clean Content Rating
There are three levels/categories of rating that a book receives based on its content. The rubric used to make this decision consists of four sub-categories as listed below.
| Subcategories (0-5 rating) |
|---|
| Profanity |
| Violence |
| Sexual content/nudity |
| Mature themes |
After rating these sub-categories, we arrive at a categorical rating for the clean content as explained here:
Clean
A book receives this rating if it has none or negligible profanity, violence, sexual innuendo, and mature themes.
Intermediate
A book would contain some sexual innuendo, pre-marital relationships, some swearing, violence (mention of suicide) to get this rating.
Not Clean
If a book has sexually explicit content, highly profane language, gory violence, or LGBTQ content it will be rated as not clean.
Additionally, we will also list an advisory for the content that might not be clean when an ‘Intermediate’ clean rating book is reviewed so readers can decide whether to skip the book or the specific parts if permitted. Books with LGBTQ content or sexually explicit content are not reviewed.
Recommendations
Book review ratings
The reviews include a point rating (out of five) and get a corresponding category label as well as explained in the rubric below (e.g., a book with 5/5 rating will be labeled a ‘Recommended’ book). The scale is not a regular interval scale as we at The Book Sieve believe that how we feel about a book does not follow a linear pattern.
Book review rubric
| Category rating | Point rating (out of five) |
|---|---|
| Recommended | 4-5 |
| Feel Good | 3-3.9 |
| Okayish | 1.6-2.9 |
| Pass this one | 0-1.5 |