Henry V

Review also includes:

The Taming of the Shrew, ill. Gwen Green, 978-1842340516

Everything about these narrative retellings of the stories of the plays is worthy. In the nicely produced, 30-page formula, there are quotations, accounts of characters and background interspersed with lots of lovely colour pictures, including paintings. Good fillers to use in work about Shakespeare and the plays. I’m not sure what the series title refers to but it’s a strangely disconnected, adult view of how to lead children to the plays, more usefully filling the library shelves and the topic box. The text is filled with appropriate adult comment and information reduced to often wooden sentences whose purpose is more to pay homage to ‘our greatest dramatist and poet’ than to excite curiosity. A lot of fancy frontage but only a few, narrow doors into the world of the plays.