Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children

Last year’s tradition of reading Shakespeare-inspired works (and maybe watching/reading more of the Bard’s work) ranged from the unexpected highs of Maggie O’Farrell’s quietly magical historical fiction to the depths of boredom with Lamb’s “classic” reinterpretations for children, and with just one potential read lingering on my TBR shelf I was hesitant to get back into it. The single volume in question was another set of Shakespearean stories for children, this time rewritten by British children’s author E. Nesbit, so I fully expected another set of trite tales unsuited and unengaging for even the most inquisitive of minds. Thankfully, Nesbit has far more appeal than the Lambs, and I found myself delighting in these show more quick and light interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays. Nesbit, of course, simplified extensively and left out much of the violence and sexuality that make Shakespeare popular with adult audiences, but they managed to capture the major themes of each of the stories by focusing on the adventure and romance which drive the tales to give young readers (or listeners, as the case may be) the spark to inspire a love of classic English literature. This edition also boasts a selection of Arthur Rackham’s Shakespearean illustrations, which was the entire reason I bought this book for my collection, as well as some supplementary line drawings from three other illustrators. While the line drawings are lovely and interspersed well throughout the text, the designers let Rackham down somewhat - allowing blurry reproductive techniques to mar some of the colour plates and placing them rather randomly amongst the pages of their stories. I’m clearly going to need a copy of this book with better illustrations to give Rackham his due, but in the meantime I am glad to have been able to explore Nesbit’s fun interpretations and am once again inspired to get back into exploring the works of England’s most famous writer. show less

Dnf. Nesbit did an excellent job condensing Shakespeare’s plays into short stories for children, although I’m not sure how accessible they would be for today’s kids. I was enjoying listening to them, however I didn’t enjoy some of the Librivox narrators as much and decided to discontinue the book.

This is a good book! Not the best one I have, but it's great! :)

facsimile of original 1907