RATING: 4 STARS
(I received an ARC from the NETGALLEY)
(Review Not on Blog)

Macbeth is my favourite Shakespeare tragedy so I am always interesting in any retelling. I was especially interested to see how a play on murder and ghosts would translate to children. This is a very brief overview of the play sanitized for little readers, but the big concepts remain. I think this is a perfect to get kids interested in Shakespeare - but it's for a bit older kids and with parental guidance (of what it means - it's still Shakespeare)

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.

This book would not download and therefore I was not able to read. I would love to as I love Shakespeare and would love to know what the children's version would be like and if I could recommend it. I tried several times.

A cute illustrated "cliff notes" version of Macbeth. I really enjoyed reading this version of Macbeth. It stays true to the original play, but puts everything in terms anyone who isn't familiar with the play can understand, and gets across the major plot points.

An excellent retelling of the famous play. I particularly loved the drawings.

Shakespeare for many is a book to read in school, for others (like me) is reading one of th best plays in the world and from history. This is a children's version which is quite a nice introduction and easy reading for children or any one who wants to read a little bit more cultural.

Looks pretty great but I expected it to be longer and have more details. The illustrations are quite nice.

Obviously a kids’ version. Starts with character sketches, which is always nice even when you’ve read it before. After that it’s basically some simple sketch drawings between pretty bland plot explanations. There’s a lot of repetition.
As a recap it’s okay, though rather dry. Thankfully it’s short, so it may not bore the kids too quickly.

Unable to open the .acsm file. I haven't read it :(

Well I haven't read any of Shakespeare books because I can't understand the Shakespeare language. So for me this book is like the most precious book. I am so interested in reading Shakespeare that I had decided that I will do Masters in English literature but unfortunately I couldn't. I loved the story and if its exactly Macbeth then its too good to be read without any difficulty.

'Shakespeare for Children: The Tragedy of Macbeth' by Shakespeare Children is a concise retelling of the play.

With illustrations this short 64 page book does a pretty good job of summarizing the story of Macbeth. All the characters and major events are here.

It's a pretty brutal story that's probably best for middle school aged readers. This would also be an excellent pre-read for someone before they saw the classic play. The overview is solid, but can't replace the beauty and drama of the original. I liked this retelling.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Sweet Cherry Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Interesting way of presenting the story. Basically massive summaries accompanied by little hand drawings that probably aren't much bigger than scribbles on a napkin (it's really hard to tell scale when they fuck up in layout). I would say they do overuse a few words to the point the words lose their meanings, and not all of the characterizations are totally accurate as well.

Regardless of all that, it's a different look at a centuries' old story. While I do understand this is aimed for kids, it could have been a little better, but it's still better than some of the crap that's out there.

This is a great book ! I would recommend ,or buy it for any beginner Shakespeare fan young or old . I give it 5 stars !