Read Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare For Children (2002)

Online Book

Author

E. Nesbit

Genre

Fiction

Rating

4.12 of 5 Votes: 3

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ISBN

0760734046 (ISBN13: 9780760734049)

Language

English

Publisher

barnes & noble

Shops

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble

Free Online

Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare For Children (2002) - Plot & Excerpts

this was a brief introduction to shakespeare for children. some of the stories glossed certain plot lines over, perhaps e. nesbit did not think they were important. but i feel in shakespeare that the minor plot lines are just as important as the major ones (as we had discussed in class. my new favorite play is the winter's tale, and it was done wonderfully in this shortened form. this may have been the only story that i did not take issue with. anika likes shakespeare--i have told her the jist of many of the plays and she has seen the merchant of venice a bunch of times, besides she and the bard share a birthday, so since these are shorter stories i hope she will pick it up and read it. what i really liked about this collection is that nesbit boils some of these more lengthy plays down to easily understood chunks. i think it is a good jumping off point for kids. if they like the story perhaps they will pick up the play and wade their way through that.

To write the storyline behind a Shakespearean work without detracting from the beauty of the play is difficult. For example, how does one tell the already-cliched story of thwarted love (Romeo and Juliet) without sounding sentimental and schmaltzy? But E. Nesbit does, in simple language and a well-thought out structure to the storyline she plots out of the massive works of the Bard. Beyond the storyline, she weaves in her views on the heros and heroines that meander in and out of Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and even lesser-known (to me anyway) plays like Pericles. Each is a gem unto itself and does the 14th century playwright justice. This book is not just for children but for anyone who wanted to read Shakespeare in story form to appreciate his ideas about humanity and the human condition. Nesbit's book does what every good writer of the great works aims to do: To make you want to read the original for yourself.

What do You think about Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare For Children (2002)?

When a writer, who is distilling down Shakespeare to the basic stories for children, begins her version of Macbeth with these words "When a person is asked to tell the story of Macbeth, he can tell two stories. One is of a man who came to the throne of Scotland by a crime in the year 1039, and reigned justly and well, on the whole, for fifteen years or more. This story is part of Scottish history. The other story issues from a place called Imagination; it is gloomy and wonderful, and you shall hear it." She has won me over COMPLETELY. This book should sit right next to a Complete Works of Shakespeare and the Lambs' Shakespeare stories in every home.
—Cynthia Egbert