Customer Reviews

The Children's Shakespeare: As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, a Midsummer Night's Dream, Pericles, Romeo & Juliet, and the Winter's Tale

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The stories are quite short as mentioned above, but still wonderful. And yet, I would not have minded a little more meat, even for the young listeners & readers. I look at these stories as a whetting of the appetite and mental preparation for the real and better thing.

One of my frustrations while trying to decide whether or not I should purchase this book was the lack of a complete list of the "plays" contained in the collection. I want to share them with you along with short notes regarding how they appear in the book:

The Winter's Tale: 8 pages, with a little over 2 pages of dialogue.

Romeo and Juliet: 10 pages, about 2 pages of dialog.

The Tempest: 4 page long synopsis, with good summary quote at the end.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: 7 pages with about 4 pages of dialogue.

King Lear: 8 pages with about 2 pages of dialogue.

Cymbeline: 8 pages with about 6 pages of dialogue.

The Taming of the Shrew: 9 pages, 5 pages of dialogue

Hamlet: 8 pages, 2 and a half of dialogue

Twelfth Night: 8 pages, 7 of dialogue

As You Like It: 8 pages, 5 of dialogue.

Pericles: 8 pages, 1 of dialogue. Basically a synopsis.

I read and reread this book as a youth. The stories read much like classic fairy tales with tragedy, irony, and moral lessons. The writing is very accessible and encouraged me to seek out the full length "stories" in their original (play script) form once I was old enough (6th/7th grade) to really read them.

For a child who has a love of literature, these retellings of the great plays may start a life-long interest in Shakespeare's art (as they did for me).

Beautifully read with passion. The stories come alive with the terrific narration and emotion. The backround music adds a special quality, and flows effortlessly with the stories. For those who never thought they could understand or appreciate The Bard don't miss out on this. This Shakespeare is easy to comprehend. It also includes many expected quotes even though it is abridged. If you want your children to be "culture literate", this is a must for any collection.

This book provides lots of Shakespeare's Storys like "A Midsummer's Night Dream" and "Hamlet" with a children's fairy tale twist. The storys are the same as Shakespeare's, but easier for children to understand. My favorite story was Hamlet because I had just seen the play. A while after we read Children's Shakespeare and it helped me to understand Hamlet better.

This book is loads of fun! I bought it for my third grader, who is taking a field trip to see "Romeo and Juliet." I wanted him to have some familiarity with the storyline so he wouldn't be yawning cluelessly by the end of Act I. He loved it so much he wanted to discuss it! Even my husband who hates to read the stuff enjoyed it.

In short, the book is well done. It shortens the plays into a very long story-summary without the dramatic language that can be somewhat of a distraction. We're not talking Cliff's Notes here folks. This is just a handful of pages per play written on a level anyone can understand and enjoy. The book is not long so it's not intimidating. (Have you seen any books containing Shakespeare's complete works, lately? Mine could be used for a doorstop! It's huge!)

We paired this book with the comedy of "The Reduced Shakespeare Company's" version of Romeo and Juliet. My son is actually looking forward to the trip!

Shakespeare is for kids and adults in E. Nesbit's creative mind. I always liked fairy tales, but I couldn't read Shakespeare very well. In Children's Shakespeare E. Nesbit turned his work into fairy tales without changing the story and morals. This book is not much like Nesbit's other books because it was written by Shakespeare, but I bet there are some simularities.

This book was a overall well writen book and I beleive E. Nesbit put a lot of hard work into her books in her life-time. I'm sure if she were alive now she would still be writing good books to this day.

Of course this book is no substitute for Shakespeare, but I don't think it's meant to be. What it does is break down the plays into simple (but reasonably thorough) stories kids can understand, while conveying some flavor of the original. If you've ever taken a little kid to see a Shakespeare play, you'll know that they can totally get into the action and mood, but may have a hard time following the plot (the man wrote some mighty complicated plots). I've used this book twice now to introduce my kid to the plays before taking him to see them. Thanks to E. Nesbitt's lovely storytelling, he goes in already understanding the plot, which leaves him free to appreciate the language and performance because he gets what they're all about. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to introduce their kids to Shakespeare, especially if you plan to follow it up by seeing the play!

This was not the book I thought I was purchasing. I was looking for a version that I read back in the early 90's written for elementary age kids. This book is not for elementary age kids-- not what I read about in other reviews.

Romeo and Juliet

Felipe Gravier and Lorenzo Schiavo review:

We think that Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two star-crossed lovers whose families are in a terrible fight which prevents them from coming together. How far the couple will go to be together becomes the focus of the story. Of his richest poetry. The opening and closing choruses are some of his most outstanding work. Romeo's It is a brilliant love story but not much more. It still possesses however some wooing of Juliet is fabulously written. The Friar gets the best lines. Mercutio is one the best friends of Romeo. It is not as good as Shakespeare has written but it's still a fabulous book and up there with his best work. One part of the play we didn't like was that for the tow families get arrange there two kids had to die.
The English language wasn't finally finished so Shakespeare had the liberty to create words and play with the language, as he liked. That's why It was so difficult to understand what each character wanted to express so the teacher had to explain us each of that words and teach us all the words in that age and told us which were the words in the English of today.