William Shakespeare & the Globe (Trophy Picture Books) (Paperback)

by Aliki (Author, Illustrator) "Will was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, more than four hundred years ago..." (more)
Key Phrases: James Burbage

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"How many ages hence/ Shall this our lofty scene be acted over/ In states unborn and accents yet unknown!" In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, he prophesies his own future more accurately than he may ever have dreamed. Although Shakespeare's works have touched people everywhere, very little is known of his life. Well-loved author and illustrator Aliki pulls together clues from writings, drawings, history, birth, marriage, and death records, and from Shakespeare's own plays, in this vibrant introduction to one of the greatest writers of all time.

Cleverly arranged as a play, with an aside and acts one through five, the book features a quotation from one of Shakespeare's plays on every spread. Bite-sized chunks of text are interspersed with the lovely detailed illustrations Aliki is famous for, making what might be a difficult subject very accessible. In addition, there are charts listing Shakespeare's plays, a chronology of his life, sidebars with mini-biographies of significant people in his life, and a partial list of words and expressions he invented (gloomy, moonbeam, mountaineer, zany, and bated breath, among 2,000 others!). Aliki also devotes a special section to Sam Wanamaker, a 20th-century man with a dream to reopen Shakespeare's Globe playhouse in London. (Ages 7 and older) --Emilie Coulter --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
William Shakespeare may get top billing in the title of this picture book, but the emphasis within is less certain. Aliki (Mummies Made in Egypt) doesn't investigate Shakespeare as a personality; dividing her work into five "acts," she focuses more on Elizabethan culture, dramatic conventions and living conditions, then shifts to Sam Wanamaker and the process of renovating the Globe in the 20th century. Aliki employs serviceable, almost pedestrian statements to convey the history, stretching occasionally toward cleverness. Of the open-ceilinged Globe, she comments, "When it rained, [the audience] knew it." The material on Wanamaker's restoration sheds light on the process by which the new Globe was built ("The first and only thatched roof in London since 1666"), although the character of Sam, with whom readers are meant to identify, remains bland. Pages are loaded with small panel illustrations of characters and historic figures in exaggerated poses. They capture a jolly theatrical spirit (nearly everyone in the quaint colored-pencil pictures wears a gentle smile), yet the many crowd scenes do not repay scrutiny. Unlike Diane Stanley's work in Bard of Avon, these pictures give only a broad idea of the historical context. Quotations from the bard populate the margins, and numerous appendixes provide facts. The wide range of information here makes this book a useful introduction to Elizabethan theater, despite its disparate themes and generalized pictures. All ages. (May)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (August 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0064437221
• ISBN-13: 978-0064437226
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #198,196 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner by Aliki!, April 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: William Shakespeare & the Globe (Hardcover)

Aliki's gift for clarity, humor and cleverness shine through this wonderful book. It is, like all Aliki's books, loaded with information, but manages not to overwhelm. You will find yourself coming back to this book again and again, examining the pictures and finding details you hadn't noticed before. A marvelous introduction to Shakespeare for mid- to older elementary children (and a visual delight for even younger readers!).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Play's the Thing, April 29, 2007

By	cindy "cindy213" (Texas) - See all my reviews

I bought this book for my 1st grader as an intro to Shakespeare. For my purposes this book contains too much extraneous information about Sam Wanamaker. His accomplishment of having the new Globe theatre built is amazing, but pales in comparison to Shakespeare's accomplishments, which I would rather hear about. We get to know details about "Will," but not anything about his plays except for some excellent representative drawings of representative characters. What my daughter has taken away from this book so far is that London Bridge really did fall down, Shakespeare died at age 52 and Marlowe at age 29, Cleopatra is associated with a snake, London had city walls, and Queen Elizabeth I came before the current queen, Elizabeth II. That's all useful foundation material, but we'll need another book to really sample Shakespeare.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Introduction to the Globe, May 7, 2006

By	Christina Connell "Bibliocat" (Easley, SC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The presentation is clever. Aliki has organized her information into Acts, Scenes, and Asides, with Act Five being the work of Sam Wanamaker to recreate the Globe Theater. She has also laid out her prose text as if it were lines of poetry, furthering the playbook effect. I often checked the text to see if it was written in iambic pentameter (it isn't). The illustrations are lively and highly detailed.

The pages are very busy. Here are the contents of a typical page, from top to bottom: four lines from As You Like It; a drawing of Christopher Marlowe; an information box about the Rose Playhouse and builder Philip Henslowe's diaries; seven lines of text about the Admiral's Men and Marlowe; a drawing of three actors on a stage, surrounded by groundlings; the titles of sixteen Shakespeare plays superimposed in wavy lines over the drawing of the actors; a caption beneath; and a line from The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Aliki's efforts to squeeze as much as possible into this book sometimes become distracting. All of the illustrations have their own text boxes, with additional information provided in up to five sentences. Readers may have to keep backtracking in order to follow the narrative, and I sometimes wonder if texts like this are the best way to format nonfiction material.