Tales from Shakespeare

E-041: Scholastic. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 2004. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 4to. Scholastic. 2004. 192 pgs. First Edition/First Printing. Signed by 6 of the illustrators Barbara McClintock, Diane Dillon/Leo Dillon, Chesley Mclaren, Jon J. Muth, Mary GrandPre. Included are: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, As You Like It, Macbeth, The Tempest, Othello, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards lightly rubbed and worn. Mix the intricacies of Shakespeare's plots and his poetic language with illustrations by award-winning artists and the result is a treasure trove of well-told tales. In these adaptations, Packer captures the essence of the playwright's words and ideas, placing them in concise and clearly told stories. A nine-page introductory essay presents basic biographical facts. The tales-five each of the Bard's best-known comedies and tragedies-begin with a short introduction to explain the basic thesis of the play, followed by a list of "Main Players," and a skillful 13- to 15-page prose retelling. The narrative consists mostly of short, declarative sentences that cut right to the heart of the plot, but the interweaving of numerous pertinent lines of dialogue helps to keep the poetic flavor of the original. Each retelling is accompanied by a full-page opening illustration, and a small detailed painting highlights the conclusion. The styles vary from Barry Moser's foreboding black-and-white scratchboard portrait of Macbeth to Barbara McClintock's detailed view of the Forest of Arden to P. J. Lynch's impressionistic watercolor rendering of the ghost of King Hamlet. The quality is always excellent. Each illustrator sets the appropriate tone for and conveys the mood of the tale, and the breadth of artistic interpretations gives the book appeal to a wide audience. These versions are fuller and the choice of vocabulary more suited to American audiences than that found in E. Nesbit's The Best of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1999). This handsome volume will provide youngsters with a clear understanding of the basis of the plays before they approach the original scripts. E-041; 4to 11" - 13" tall; 192 pages .