William Shakespeare: His Life and Times (Historical Notebooks)

Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of contextual understanding required of students to comprehend even the most well known of the Bard's lines? Get this book. It attracts all readers with its busy layouts and hidden fold-out mysteries. It then immerses them in Elizabethan politics, daily life, recreation, and Shakespeare's biography. This book is Required Exploring.

Great addition to our homeschool curriculum.

LOVELY HANDS ON GIFT FOR A CHILD.

This handsome interactive volume, similar to the "Ology" series also published by Candlewick (the highly popular Pirateology, Dragonology, etc.), purports to be William Shakespeare's personal scrapbook, put together in April, 1613, on the eve of his retirement from London to Stratford-upon Avon.The book is filled with all kinds of fun envelopes and tiny books to open and peruse, as well as a plethora of color illustrations. Candlewick provides a You-Tube video in which each page is turned and the viewer can see how various parts of the book open, allowing potential readers to see the layout of the book without bothering to visit the bookstore.Written in a kind of mock-Elizabethan style, Shakespeare writes his reminiscences for the benefit of his daughter, Judith. Sidebars supplement these faux memoirs with facts, such as we know them, about Shakespeare's life, although the authors are careful to note that, for all his fame, we really know relatively little about Shakespeare's life. Nonetheless, the Bard recounts his childhood days in Stratford, including frolicking in the Forest of Arden with his siblings, his school days, courting and then progresses to talking about his marriage to Anne Hathaway, the birth of their children and the loss of his beloved son Hamnet at the age of 11. Shakespeare's scrapbook touches on a wide variety of topics, including life in London, the Globe Theatre, his fellow players, love and war, feasts and fun in Elizabethan England, life at court, ghosts and fairies, and more. The scrapbook concludes with Shakespeare's Last Will and Testament, and a letter from Shakespeare to his daughter Judith.The book is not really laid out in a manner that would make it easily usable for a school biographical report on Shakespeare, but it could certainly supplement a more conventional biography and would make a valuable and entertaining classroom resource for teachers to have on hand when studying Shakespeare plays. Although the book is suitable for ages 8 and above, it may be more likely to appeal to students who have already begun studying Shakespeare in school (here in California that's in middle school). If a parent were taking a child to their first Shakespeare performance, this scrapbook would also be excellent to read together to provide historical background. Brief excerpts from various plays are included, as are synopses of some of his key works.As the holidays approach, I can't help but think what a lovely holiday gift this would make to a favorite English teacher!

To appreciate the wonders of this book, you really need more images of the book's interactive interior. There are dozens of goodies inside this large-format 30-page book with a hardback cover that "unlocks" via that skeleton keyhole you see in the middle of the front cover. Quite frankly, this is a terrific gift even for teenagers and adults who are trying to summon the energy to begin exploring Shakespeare's works.The entire book, including dozens of flaps, pockets, envelopes and other fold-out "extras" seems to have been designed by a graphic artist with a taste for the realms of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings--that kind of historical fantasy. Throughout the book, tiny rose-and-beige-colored "booklets" open from the bigger pages, summarizing the Bard's many plays--always with an eye to entice young readers.Here's a Potter-ish summary of Hamlet in one of these little booklets-within-a-book: "In one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is visited by the ghost of his dead father. The ghost begs Hamlet to avenge his murder by Hamlet's wicked uncle Claudius, who is now the new king and married to Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Hamlet pretends to be mad to disguise his plot of revenge and stages a play that will make the king reveal his guilt. But Hamlet's beloved, Ophelia, really does go mad after ..." There are a few more sentences in the actual booklet, but you get the point, right? The designers of this book know how to entice young readers these days: Suspense! Ghosts! (Or are the ghosts real?) Murder! Madness! (Or is the madness real?) And wicked adults who must be stopped by the young people in the play!Of course, that's what Shakespeare understood in his own era and why his works were so successful in the first place.And, if you're giving this book to a youthful or adult reader, why not add a DVD of Kenneth Brannagh's production of  William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition) . Better yet, Brannagh's epic production, which produces the entire uncut play, is now available in Blu-ray as well to really knock your eyes out as the drama explodes on the screen. Here's that Blu-ray link:  Hamlet [Blu-ray Book ]

Beautiful, although W.Shakespeare never wrote personal letters.... or he might have but nobody has read one ( do not exist).

Very satisfied.