Reimagining Shakespeare for Children and Young Adults

Shakespeares plays have been endlessly reimagined in multiple media over the centuries, allowing each generation to encounter the Bard in stimulating ways. Of all the new audiences for Shakespeare, children and young adults are the most deeply impressionable, capable of keen enthusiasm and disappointment alike

This original volume explores the myriad ways in which Shakespeare and his plays have been reimagined for young audiences. Addressing a wide range of adaptations, from picture books and novels to board games and films, the essays consider how this explosion of interest affects literature and literacy, pedagogy and performance, and Shakespeare's legacy at the millennium. Editor Naomi J. Miller has assembled a host of contributors who approach the subject from three distinct perspectives. In the first section, well-known children's book authors, including Marcia Williams, Bruce Coville, and Gary Blackwood, offer unique insights into the creative process of reimagining Shakespeare for young readers. Scholars and critics proceed in the following section with an investigation of the various adaptations used to encourage appreciation for Shakespeare among today's young audiences. The volume concludes with essays by teachers who share strategies for bringing Shakespeare vividly to life in the classroom or onstage, with kids from inner-city playgrounds to college lecture halls nationwide. By highlighting creative scenarios and guises through which the Bard can speak to young people, this pioneering study points the way to sustaining Shakespeare's magic for generations to come.

Naomi J. Miller is Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona. She is co-editor of Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern Period and the author of Changing the Subject. Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England.