Review & Giveaway: The Sixty- Minute Shakespeare–Midsummer Night’s Dream

I will be honest… I’ve never really read any Shakespeare. In school my English classes never read it. Going to be honest though, I was always kind of sad about this. I had heard so much about it.
Therefore, I was determined that my kids were going to have a good knowledge of Shakespeare and his writing. Of course the books are still quite a ways over my kids heads.
Then we went to see Gnome & Juliet at the theatre, and my son kept asking me questions about some of the lines in the movie.. Which referred back to Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. I told him that he would have to read the book, when he was older. That was not good enough, he doesn’t like to have to wait.
So, when we got  A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Five Star Publications to read and review, I was excited! I told Monkey Man, he could finally read one of Shakespeare’s books. He was very anxious to do so… Of course this is the Abridged version and I was wandering how much it would leave out.  Cass Foster did a great job! While condensing the story down, he never compromised any of the key points in the story. He is a Professor Emeritus of Theatre and resides in the Garden Isle of Kauai.
I was thinking this was going to be one of those books we had to read together, so I could stop and explain so of it to him, as we went. Boy, was I wrong. This book was broken down so nicely, and put into terms for kids to understand! Plus it had wonderful footnotes on almost every page, helping to understand any other phrases. Honestly, I think it even helped me to understand it a bit more.. I got the original story from the library shortly before this one arrived, so I could compare them. Sometimes, I had a very difficult time following some of the story line in the original. 

In the end, I did end up reading with him. Since he wanted to read it in parts. He played some and I did the others. We thoroughly enjoyed this book. I probably would still not teach this or have a student younger than a 4th grader read this. My son is an advanced reader, so this was not a struggle for him.

There are six wonderful books in this collection, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The others include Hamlet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night. Eventually I would like to own the whole set. Great books to have to introduce your child to Shakespeare.

Buy Them:
You can own the whole set for $45.89 or you can buy one book for $8.99.

Win It:
One 3 Crazy Monkey’s Reader will get the chance to win their own copy of  “The Sixty-Minute Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream” book.

To Enter:
Leave me a comment telling me what is your favorite Shakespeare Play. (Mandatory to Enter)

Extra Entries:
Remember to leave me a separate entry for each one to count!!

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Giveaway Ends September 20th @ 8pm EST. US Residents Only… Winner will be chosen by Random.org and will have 48 hrs to respond to my email, or I chose a new winner. Remember to leave me an email address to contact you!

*This is a MamaBuzz Media review. The product was provided by: Five Star Publications for this review. Opinions are 100% mine or my monkeys.