Kristen McDermottBesprekingen
Auteur van William Shakespeare: His Life and Times (Historical Notebooks)
Besprekingen
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William Shakespeare: His Life and Times. McDermott, Kristen and Berk, Ari. Templar Books: Candlewick Press. 2010
In this unique and creative illustrated book weaves a fictional narrative of Shakespeare’s life and times through a series of letters to his daughter, Judith. Each page contains numerous artistic, historical, cultural, and literary elements that are factual and scholarly, and the “narrative” aspects, as such, guide the reader and provide context. For example, a large, interactive, pop-out model of the Globe allows readers to physically explore, in a sense, the various parts of the theater, with our authors’ character of “William Shakespeare” as a tour guide. This character of Shakespeare is admittedly a fictional aspect of this book—many liberties are taken in these imagined missals to his daughter; however, in my opinion the strategy is both tasteful and effective. The narrative builds naturally from the material being presented and is cohesive from start to finish. Essentially, the conceit is that Shakespeare is writing home to tell his family that he is retiring and coming back to Stratford to be with them. He is “looking back” over his experiences since coming to London and becoming the world’s most famous storyteller. The imaginative account serves to give a sense of realness and immediacy to the real history that is detailed in this book.
The authors have essential amalgamated several key elements of Shakespeare’s era and his plays and presented them to readers in a personal and easily understandable fashion. Additionally, the lush, beautiful page layouts and images make this book particularly engaging and fun to read. The numerous pop-outs and inserts, rather than making this text seem “kiddish” or elementary, serve to bring us that much further into Shakespeare’s world, such as the various letters, maps, guides, illustrations, etc. I truly enjoyed reading this book, and I believe it would be a fabulous text to use with middle or high-school students who are first being introduced to Shakespeare. I would have students choose an aspect or topic from the book that interests them and have them research that topic for a paper or presentation.