Teodora’s Book Reviews: “20 Shakespeare Children’s Stories – The Complete Collection” (Sweet Cherry Publishing, Leicester, 2012)

At one point in our life everybody needs to read some of Shakespeare’s most famous and greatest plays. His original stories, though, can sometimes be difficult to be understood by young readers especially. But recently I’ve come across a delightful selection of 20 plays by Shakespeare, which is exactly what children of all ages need.

The collection includes the following plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Winter’s Tale, Timon of Athens and Twelfth Night. Each book has a short summary on the back cover, which is really useful because children can find out what the plot is about. At the beginning of every single play, the main characters are shortly described, giving the readers an idea about their part in the story and their relationships with other characters. Moreover, the font size of the letters is appropriate to the needs of a child, the black-and-white pictures are well designed and the accessible plot always focuses on the most important events. The children will surely enjoy the amusing twist of events with the mistaken identities, which are frequently met in comedies. Perhaps some of them will be a little bit confusing (the best example would probably be The Comedy of Errors), but, if we think of the title, this may be just the point. In the end, no story leaves any ambiguity behind. Also, when it comes to tragedies like Hamlet or Macbeth, the deaths of most of the characters won’t affect the readers, as the dramatic moments are appropriately depicted for them.

Children will find the books easy to read. Once they finish a story, they will want to go to the next one and, when they grow up, they will go directly to the original play. I have my own relevant example in this respect. In spring, I staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream with some of my schoolmates for an activity about Shakespeare (I had Titania’s part). So after I played Titania, I wanted to read the play again. Knowing the story and the characters by heart, the reading time turned out to be even more enjoyable.

It may have been more like a flick through the pages for me, but the younger readers of this amazing collection, besides developing their reading skills, will find a lot of entertainment and fall in love with the brilliant work of Shakespeare.