Publisher: Frances Lincoln Publishers

A Stage Full of Shakespeare Stories is a collection of 12 of Shakespeare’s plays rewritten as stories for children in Year 3 and up. Each story begins with a title page with wonderful illustrations depicting some of the characters and important objects featured in the story. There is also a quotation from the original version. This is followed by a list of the main characters in the story and an illustration of each one, which is handy to refer back to when reading the story as it also includes how the characters are related to each other. There are beautiful illustrations throughout each story, some of which are full page spreads.

The stories are faithful to the originals and although rewritten to be accessible to younger children, they do not shy away from using ambitious vocabulary. There is some use of language that children may not be familiar with, such as ‘thee’, but this provides a great opportunity for discussion of how language has changed since the plays were originally written and how some words are still in use. At the back of the book, there is some information about Shakespeare and his life as well as a full list of his plays. There is also some additional information about each of the stories in the book including a brief overview of each one and an idea of where the story came from.