Theme

A theme is the idea or general lesson (sometimes called the 'moral') of the story. That moral was a **message** that you could glean from the overall story. For instance, from //The Three Little Pigs// we learned about the importance of planning a project well. We know this, because we learned that building a brick house works, while building a straw house is short-sighted.

In a book report, you could state that one theme for //The Three Little Pigs// is that good planning can lead to success. But we could also say the theme was about making smart choices.

As you can see, a theme isn’t something that's stated outright; it often appears as a lesson or **message** that the reader understands by reading between the lines.

A book of fiction can have many themes. Why? Because different people can find different meanings in books. You may [|find a lesson] that others don’t see.

1. When you [|finish reading] a book, ask yourself to sum up the book in a single word. For example, a single word for the book Little Red Riding Hood could be //deception//. Deception is the subject of the book.
 * Finding a Theme in Two Steps**

2. Next, stretch that single word into a message: innocence can lead to deception. This is a theme for //Little Red Riding Hood//.