What's So Special about Shakespeare? Best Shakespeare Books for Younger Kids

It’s hard to avoid Shakespeare in this 400^th anniversary year of his death, and the UK is celebrating in style with a bevy of kids' books, among many other things, of course!
 

Marcia Williams’s Mr Shakespeare’s Plays takes a more serious approach and locates Shakespeare and the stories firmly in his own time in a series of gorgeous strip cartoon versions of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, all of which are set on the stage of the famous Globe theatre. Marcia Williams’s dialogue boxes include quotes from the plays which make an excellent early introduction to the language of Shakespeare. Although it removes them from their origins as performances, reading prose versions of the plays aloud conveys the plots easily without young listeners feeling that the original language is challenging.

 

Geraldine McCaughrean’s Stories from Shakespeare is for readers and listeners who are aged 10 and older. Among the 10 are the obvious favorites such as Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer’s Night Dream, but also Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, Othello and King Lear. Although written in her own prose, Geraldine McCaughrean also ensures that young readers are clear that these were originally plays by setting out a cast list at the beginning of each story. She also ensures that the poetic language of Shakespeare’s original versions is not forgotten by including quotes – many of which are the ones that have become every day phrases - from the original plays.
 
 

If any doubts about why Shakespeare is so worth remembering, Michael Rosen’s What’s So Special about Shakespeare? will provide all the answers. Illustrated by Sarah Naylor, it includes a story of four of the plays as well as a wealth of information about Shakespeare’s life and a timeline to remind all of why we are celebrating his work in 2016.