Shakespeare: His Work and His World

Michael Rosen and Robert Ingpen, in SHAKESPEARE: HIS WORK AND HIS WORLD, pay homage to the great bard in this tasteful and detailed account of Shakespeare's life and times. The book is organized into a series of short chapters, which are introduced with creative chapter titles and also an essential question of that section; for instance, "So what was it like in England when Shakespeare was writing?" Rosen's prose is at once elegant and student-friendly, and the gorgeous formatting and layouts for each page are large and easy to read. Ingpen's illustrations (if you can call them that--they are more like professional paintings) are lush, colorful, and vivid. Both author and illustrator have won prestigious awards, and Ingpen alone has show more published more than one hundred acclaimed books. As for accuracy, some liberties have been taken, such as a scene where characters from Romeo and Juliet are dressed as greasers (ie THE OUTSIDERS), as well as several areas which are understood to be ambiguous in the scholarship. One image of an English marketplace has a caption that reads: "The marketplace in Stratford as it may have looked in Shakespeare's day. Is that factual? I think it's useful, if anything, their approach. They enhance scholarship with their interpretations and embellishments, allowing young readers to access complex topics with ease. This text would be a wonderful companion to any unit on Shakespeare, as it touches on all of his major works, gives ample background knowledge and context, contains numerous illustrations/maps/charts/diagrams/etc., as well as several notable pages of appended material, including a detailed timeline and bibliography. Highly recommend. show less

Rosen's (Classic Poetry) compelling text and Ingpen's (Who Is the World For?) dramatic paintings invite readers into the "extraordinary and dangerous times" in which the Bard wrote his famous plays. The narrative and design divide into distinct sections ideal for browsing. To set the stage, Rosen introduces "A Plot!" and details how, in 1598, to avoid paying their landlord, actors covertly pulled down the timber from the Curtain theater to reconstruct the Globe (a portion of which Shakespeare owned) on the opposite side of the Thames. Most chapters begin with engaging, chatty rhetorical questions (relayed, however, in a sometimes distracting typeface) such as "What's So Special About Shakespeare?" and "So How Does Someone Stay That show more Famous?" Some metaphors, such as comparing Shakespeare's plays to a "house full of many amazing rooms," become a bit strained, but the narrative benefits from liberal quotation of Shakespeare's plays. Rosen effectively sets the historical context and reconstructs and imagines the events and circumstances of Shakespeare's life, while also demonstrating the surprising and pervasive extent of his linguistic legacy. Ingpen's atmospheric paintings evoke the romance of the era and capture the pageantry of the plays. A strong companion for young readers exploring Shakespeare. show less

I really liked this overview of Shakespeare. The author does a great job of synthesizing why Shakespeare still matters today and what is so special about his plays. The pictures are beautiful, too!

Sorry, I'm still not convinced that this will actually have an influence on the target audience. Nor did I learn anything to help me want to read more of the plays. It didn't even mention his sonnets.