Rating: Not for me
Reading Level: Middle/High School
In about 15 minutes, I caught some main points of this classic play. The after notes explain how in Shakespeare’s time, people used to joke about having “midsummer madness“ when the weather was hot, and this is a play on that idea.
Possible Concerns:
- Magic, fairies. Misdirected magic and turns everyone a bit crazy.
- Romance. Young lovers madly in love intend to elope
- Marital strife, violence, and trickery. An elven king and queen get in a fight and end up causing all kinds of trouble.
Things I liked:
- Pictoral guide to characters. For this king of all soap operas, I really needed the front page with Tony Ross’s sketched portraits & brief descriptions of the main characters; this really helped me keep track.
While the reading level is early elementary, the content is perhaps better for an older audience. I don’t particularly like how the elven king and queen fight (and even take to violence and trickery). Also, I generally think our culture puts romantic love in youth minds too much & too early, so I might be a bit conservative waiting until middle school.
Here are links to my reviews of other books in the series:
Jesus loves bookworms 