Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Under a Dancing Star (and 10 other summer reads)

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Under a Dancing Star by Laura Wood

Book of the Week: 18 August 2024

Under a Dancing Star by Laura Wood. Scholastic, 2019. Cover illustration by Yehrin Tong

To the despair of her parents, Beatrice is a keen amateur naturalist and not really interested in fashion or making polite chit-chat with stuffy neighbours.  However, being seventeen and an only child, she is expected to ‘keep the Langton bloodline alive’ and marry (in her words) ‘some wealthy, inbred aristocrat to prop the estate up.’ When she talks about some inappropriate subjects at a dinner party designed to introduce her to a prospective partner, whom she describes as having ‘the sort of blank gaze more typically found in grazing animals’, she is sent to stay with her Uncle Leo in Italy for the summer. This does not seem like much of a punishment to Beatrice, and indeed the Italian countryside drenched in sunshine and peopled with artistic young people at her uncle’s villa, seems to be far from a sanction. There is her younger cousin Hero, Klaus and his sister Ursula and Ben, an artist. Beatrice and Ben cannot seem to stop arguing, but are compelled to encounter one another at every turn. Will this annoying young man be the only person to spoil her idyllic summer, or will more sinister undercurrents in 1930s Europe intrude on her new-found freedom?

If you enjoy books by Eva Ibbotson, such as The Secret Countess, or I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, then this light-hearted summer read based on Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare is one to try.

Growing up in a long, hot summer – 10 other book choices

Click on each book cover for my review or more information

Older readers

Younger readers

 

Sweet Sorrow

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Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls

Book of the Week: 4 October 2020

Illustration by Natasha Law

First love and long, hot summers are made for one another – something that Sweet Sorrow exploits to the full.

Charlie and his mates have finished their GCSEs, gone wild at the school disco (it is 1997) and are waiting for their futures to start. Charlie is not looking forward to avoiding his dad who is jobless and resenting his mum who has moved out. He doesn’t think that doing his part-time job at the local petrol station, whilst waiting to hear about a string of failed exams, holds much promise. But long, hot summers have a way of surprising you, and one day, when he has biked out of town, he comes across an amateur dramatic society rehearsing Romeo and Juliet in the grounds of a country house. They invite him to join them, something that would normally make him run in the opposite direction, but for the fact that one of those asking him is a girl to whom he has taken an instant shine.

The story of the summer that unfolds is one of love and friendship, the clash of people from different backgrounds and the life-expanding contact with new ideas. None of this is as earnest as it sounds. The dialogue is sharp, funny and realistic and, as we learn that it is all being remembered by an adult Charlie, tinged with nostalgia. As a bonus, it evokes the magic of Shakespeare and the transformative power of drama played out in gardens and orchards under a cloudless blue sky, without ever being sickly sweet or promising a fairy tale ending.

Best suited to older readers and grown-ups.

Stratford Boys

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Stratford Boys by Jan Mark

Book of the Week: 17 April 2016

Will Shakespeare is sixteen and lives on Henley Street in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon with his parents and brothers and sister. When he isn’t helping his father in his glover’s workshop, he spends time hanging around chatting to his friends Adrian and Hugh in the churchyard of Holy Trinity or visiting The Bear public house. Adrian and Will went to the local King’s New School together.

The story begins when Adrian finds out that the council want a play put on at Whitsun and there is no travelling band of players due to visit the town. He suggests that the boys put one on themselves and that Will could adapt an old mystery play that his father John has had stored in the workshop for years. The fact that half of it is missing, and the rest has been nibbled by mice, presents a bit of a problem for Will but he gamely decides to give it a go, despite having had no experience of playwriting.

“The most significant thing Will had learned from his attempts at poetry was that there were very few words that rhymed with love: dove, above, shove, and of course, glove; and possibly move, at a pinch. His trial run at a sonnet about a glover in love had come to grief on the fifth line.”

Will and Adrian have to recruit a rag-tag band of amateur players to bring their potential play to life and find that theatre isn’t as simple as they imagined.

Jan Mark published this in 2003 and tells the story mostly in dialogue, making Will and his friends into an almost modern-sounding group of teenagers albeit in a well-researched setting.

For those who enjoy re-imaginings of the life of Shakespeare, such as King of Shadows by Susan Cooper, this is a good addition to that category and brings to life the man we will all be celebrating next weekend when we walk through the streets to commemorate his birthday.

Othello

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Othello by William Shakespeare

Book of the Week: 5 July 2015

STC 22305 copy 1, title page

 

It’s Activities Week when Year 7 will be working on a production of Othello, so Book of the Week has temporarily become ‘Play of the Week’.

A popular soldier and a newly married man, Othello seems to be in an enviable position. And yet, when his supposed friend sows doubts in his mind about his wife’s fidelity, he is gradually consumed by suspicion. In this powerful tragedy, innocence is corrupted and trust is eroded as every relationship is drawn into a tangled web of jealousies.

Quotation from the blurb of: Shakespeare, W. (2005) Othello. Edited with a commentary by Kenneth Muir. London: Penguin.

Picture of first quarto title page of Othello. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Othello_title_page.jpg (Accessed: 5 July 2015)