Ratings: Needs Parent Supervision
Reading Level: High School
Matthew’s retellings of Shakespeare’s plays are the Cliff’s notes for the Cliff’s notes! In about 10 minutes, I caught some main events leading to Caesar’s assassination.
Possible Concerns:
- Tyranny
- Conspiracy, betrayal, manipulation
- Murder, deceit
- Revenge
Things I liked:
- Pictoral list of characters. The front page has Tony Ross’s sketched portraits & brief descriptions of the main characters that helped me keep track.
While the reading level is early elementary, the content of tyrant, conspiracy, betrayal, manipulation, murder, deceit, and revenge make it more suitable for a much older audience. It did make me curious about how historically accurate it was; I spent the following morning learning about the Roman Empire around 44 BC!
Here are links to my reviews of others of Andrew Matthews’ retellings:
