More Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits
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Cover Story
This issue's cover is a photograph of Anne Frank whose diary is discussed by Michael Rosen fifty years after its first publication. Following the arrest of the Frank family and their companions, the secret annex in Amsterdam where they had been in hiding was locked up and everybody forbidden to enter it, since Jewish possessions became Nazi property and were carted away. Before this happened, the young woman, Miep Gies, who had provided those in hiding with food and who had a second key to the annex, risked herself once more by entering it. Miep retrieved Anne's diary from the devastation together with the Frank family photograph album.
Thanks to Penguin Children's Books for help in reproducing this cover.
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More Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits
This irreverently titled book encourages readers to imagine how Shakespeare might have treated his stories if he had been writing today. Inspiration taken from recent films and productions is freely acknowledged: most obviously in Much Ado About Nothing which is retitled 'Two Weddings and a Funeral'. There are eight plays in this collection and they receive a variety of treatments: film scripts, musicals, tabloid newspaper articles, agony columns and diaries. The appeal of this book is its use of contemporary language and the distillation of plot into a simplified form - stripping away excess characters to achieve clarity. I would feel happiest using More Shakespeare as an introduction to the plays proper, giving pupils an opportunity to explore the stories from a familiar angle before plunging into the complexities of seventeenth-century English. With the study of Shakespeare obligatory for SATS and GCSE students alike, this book and its companion volume, Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits, will add another entertaining weapon to the beleaguered teacher's armoury.
