DD6 is very interested in Shakespeare right now. She has been reading (and re-reading) the Usborne illustrated Shakespeare book for a few months, and is ready to move on to something more complex. I showed her an original Shakespeare (I love Shakespeare, so we have many of his plays), but she acknowledges she's not quite ready for that yet.

I'm looking for some resources--books, movies, audio, or other media--that might fit what she is looking for. I don't want to make a curriculum or study unit...I'm just thrilled she came to Shakespeare on her own (she saw the Usborne book at an English bookstore in Italy and fell in love at first sight). She reads and we casually discuss, and keep it at that.

I did find an old thread with some useful resources, just wanted to see if any other suggestions are out there lurking!

Particularly something in play form, rather than prose. She is a musical theater kid, and I think that's part of what drew her to S. in the first place.

I showed my DD6 selected parts of the Emma Thompson & Kenneth Brannaugh movie of Much Ado About Nothing. Specifically, I only showed her the introductory parts up through the masquerade ball, and then the Beatrice/Benedict story-line. (This required some previewing and careful decision-making, as that storyline intersects with the Hero storyline.)

She loved it, and we spent a great deal of time working through what all the language meant and what was going on.

It's probably still a bit early for your DD, but I found that short speeches, performed by a skilled actor, were understandable by our kids several years in advance of their being able to read the play for themselves. E.g., you can find famous Band of Brothers speech on Youtube. Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the easier comedies.

Great idea! I'll look into that.

Yep, Midsummer Night's Dream, along with Romeo & Juliet, are her two favorites. She also likes Twelfth Night.

On an unrelated note, she also came home from the library yesterday with Olivia Coolidge's Trojan War book. I was ready for Shakespeare...I'm not ready for Homer.

These are very uneven, and probably not worth the price... but many libraries have a copy (and... ahem... some BitTorrent sites). They use the original language where possible, and edit each of the plays down to 20-40 minutes:

http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Animated-Tales-Alec-McCowen/dp/B0002CHJS2

DD6 has seen about half of them, she's highly anxious and easily disturbed by characters in peril, so some Shakespeare is too stressful.

We also have taken her to 4 or 5 full length stagings of Shakespearean comedies. She was remarkably able to follow the narrative and enjoyed them tremendously.

I managed to find a collection of Graphic Novels - they have the option of easy text and original text - my 5 year old's favourite book is his Macbeth!

Perhaps if I find the ISBN number you can try find them near where you are? They have Dickens too and some other classics in the same series.

DS8 really enjoyed some of the BBC2/Wales animated Shakespeare tales. Shakespeare and avante garde Eastern European animation... some were great, some were just weird. The Tempest was particularly good... They are all pirated on Youtube.

For more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare:_The_Animated_Tales

There are a number of 'side-by-side' translations available. Barron's has a series of them, I know, and "No Fear Shakespeare" is another brand-name of a series like this.

They are arranged so as to have the original (well, mostly First Folio, anyway) text on the right hand page, and on the left, or facing, page, is a modern language translation, often with notes that explain some of the idiomatic expressions and such.

Do be aware that ALL of Shakespeare's canon contains themes, language, and content which is both bawdy and very adult in nature.

DD began reading R+J and Othello this way when she was about 6-8yo, I know. Dream, we kind of insisted on the original, since the language in that one is SO special.

Definitely aware of all the themes in Shakespeare, having read almost all of his plays! We are kind of lax on that front, we stay away from text with strong sexual undertones and extreme violence, but everything else is usually fair game, with supervision and pre-reading when needed. Which is odd for the region we live in...I was just chastised by a neighborhood parent when I mentioned that DD enjoyed Charlotte's Web at age 4...."but there's death in that book! How could you expose your child to death so young?" Ugh. Good thing I left out the fact that she read it on her own at that age!



Is it the No Fear Shakespeare graphic novels? Like this: http://www.amazon.com/Juliet-Shakes...rated/dp/1411498747/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z

Graphic novel versions of Shakespeare include the "Classical Comics" versions,

http://www.classicalcomics.com

which may be what an earlier poster had in mind. They produce "American English, Original Text", "British English, Original Text", "Plain Text", and "Quick Text" versions -- all using the same illustrations. So a kid could start with "Quick Text" and move up through "Plain Text" to eventually "Original Text".

Bruce Coville, with various illustrators, has done a couple of nice Shakespeare adaptations, such as:

WIlliam Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
ISBN-10: 0142501689
ISBN-13: 978-0142501689

Coville has also done versions of Twelfth Night, Hamlet, The Tempest, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet.

Tales From Shakespeare, Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb & Joelle Jolivet
ISBN-10: 0810994534
ISBN-13: 978-0810994539
is nice prose adaptations, but not as illustrated, so skews a little older.

Tales from Shakespeare, Marcia Williams
More Tales from Shakespeare, Marcia Williams
-- I think I've only seen one of these in person, but if it's what I recall, it worked well for kids. Each play only got a page? a few pages? But they were very "busy"
pages.

The "Shakespeare Can Be Fun" books by Lois Burdett are written by a teacher who has her elementary students perform these versions. The books incorporate the kids' own art. So whether the style appeals or not may be a matter of taste -- but if you have a kid interested from a performance point of view, they may appeal.
For instance:
A Midsummer Night's Dream for Kids (Shakespeare Can be Fun!), Lois Burdett
ISBN-10: 1552091244
ISBN-13: 978-1552091241

She might enjoy "William Shakespeare's Star Wars", which is hysterically funny. It's a play of Star Wars, in Shakespeare's style. I believe the Empire sequel is out now, too, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

What about reading the taming of the shrew and then kiss me Kate since she is a musical theater kid?

Eh nevermind...maybe when she is older?

Oh, I don't know-- it depends upon the child, I think. DD saw a production of Shrew as her very first live play (community theater, but still) when she was six. Yes, the humor is very bawdy, and the battle-of-the-sexes, firmly tongue-in-cheek gender role stuff in the play required a LOT of talking, but--

she handled it fine and really enjoyed the play. It's a lovely intro because the comedy is so over-the-top and physical in a production of it. Very much like Three Stooges or Marx brothers comedies.

She also, um... identifies rather strongly with Katerina, which no doubt helped.

What is it about Shakespeare that she likes? Is it the language, or the stories? My theater-major DS was in a summer Shakespeare festival this year, and they did a young audiences show about 3 of the plays. It mixed the original language with modern slang, kept everyone up to speed.

See if there are performances of Reduced Shakespeare Company (also on youtube), which are hysterically funny, or local productions of the comedies. Even your area high schools are probably a good resource for performances. Our high school, in trying to ramp up the theater program, added a Shakespeare club and they perform occasionally.

Would your daughter be interested in learning Middle English, or at least some of the changes in pronunciation that have occurred, so that what used to rhyme doesn't anymore? Sorry, the only resource I have for that is my old college textbook, but usborne or DK or even the more adult series might have some accessible History of English books. This time of year the bookstores have those kinds of things out as holiday gifts.

I've become more interested myself since DS' foray into it this summer, and it's amazing the things that are dropping in my lap.