Friday, April 25, 2014

Top 10 Shakespeare books for children

Andrew Matthews is an internationally renowned author who has written numerous books for children and teenagers, including Shakespeare Stories. One of ten top Shakespeare books for children he tagged for the Guardian:
King of Shadows by Susan Cooper

This is not a retelling of the plays, but a novel that includes Shakespeare as a main character. Nat Field, a young American, travels to London to play Puck in a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the reconstructed Globe Theatre. He contracts a fever, and wakes up to find himself in Elizabethan times, and about to play Puck in the premiere of the play. The time-shift element is convincingly handled, and the reason behind it provides an elegant plot twist at the end of the book. Cooper's Shakespeare is warm, human, and sympathetic. I would recommend the novel to teenagers, or advanced readers.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue