The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
There are several reasons why I did not like this adaptation of Macbeth.
1. It’s supposed to be rewritten for children, but the vocabulary is NOT age-appropriate . Even if a preteen was reading it, there are too many big words that a child would not know . If you were reading this to a child, you would have to stop after every sentence and explain half the words! I support children learning new words through reading, but there’s a point where it becomes too much. If a child doesn’t understand 4 out of 10 words in the book, they will lose interest and not learn anything.
2. It doesn’t read like a story. It reads like a synopsis. The bare bones of the story are told with almost no dialogue at all, and no descriptions. The characters are just names on the page with nothing to pull the reader’s emotions into the story. Bad story-telling!
3. The illustrations are weird-looking and boring. These black and white sketches of characters are supposed to look cartoony, I suppose, but their faces just look strange. Their eyebrows are huge, and Lady Macbeth has a crooked mouth. I don’t know much about art, but I know that these illustrations do nothing to attract the reader into the story.
4. All the mystery and beauty and painful suspense of Shakespeare’s story is completely cut out and lost. If you’re going to rewrite Shakespeare, you’d better make darn sure that you know what you’re doing! The best thing I can say about the writing is that it is all grammatically correct. But there is no magic.
I would never read this to a child. It might make them hate Shakespeare forever!
Disclaimer: I received an ecopy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts and are not influenced by anyone.
