Book of Days

                                                  Tales from Shakespeare by Tina Packer

This week I happened to see this book at our library and this morning Josh and I read King Lear from it for our Shakespeare studies. We had already read Lamb’s version last week and I was wondering if I was doing overkill reading this version. I am so glad we did. This retelling of the play went into more detail than the Lamb’s and offered us more information that helped make more sense of the play. In my opinion though, this book is not for younger children. In this re-telling, they introduce Edgar and Edmund as being Glouchester’s sons by his wife and mistress as well as leaving in the description of the scene where Cornwall gouges out Glouchester’s eyes. As Josh is a mature 12 year old we did not have a problem with reading this  - other than the yuck, that’s gross ccomment :), we both felt this retelling added a tremendous amount to our understanding of this play. Josh commented that in the Lamb’s version the character of Edgar is just mentioned and here you get an understanding of how important his role is along with those of Edmund and Glouchester. Scattered throughout the re-telling are quotes directly from the play which I was pleased to see as it helps to get a true feel of the play to hear even just parts in Shakepeare’s own language.

The author gives an account of Shakespeare and his life in the beginning of the book and we learned a few new facts we hadn’t known before.

The publication date of the book is 2004 and lists Ms. Packer as President and Artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, an award-winning theatre and theatre education group she founded in Massachusetts in 1978. The back leaf stated that the group maintains an extensive educational outreach program to bring new, young audiences to Shakespeare. She certainly helped to do that through this book with my own young Shakespearean scholar. :)