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:
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Jesus loves bookworms 
So, I feel that by Highschool Age youth should be reading Shakespeare straight on. I start my children at about 12 years. They miss a lot at first, which is good, but it is like learning a foreign language, the more they read the better they are at interpreting and understanding the content. I was really surprised at how soaking them in Shakespeare those first few years completely changed their relationship with the scriptures. After decoding Shakespeare, each of them had the lightbulb go on in their heads and they were decoding the scriptures in new ways and deeper levels.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this! I can see your point. I still hold that the content in this one is best for High School, but you are convincing me that for High Schoolers it might be best to use the original form (not these abridged versions). I appreciate your feedback!
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