During the month of October, I’m posting brief reviews of some of my favorite books from the past couple of years: those that really touched my heart, gave me a new perspective, taught me something, or were just plain fun. Hopefully you will be inspired to add something to your to-read list. 🙂
My review of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare from June 2013:
This was both a great introduction to several of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as a practical guide to introducing him to your children through the explanation and memorization of 25 passages from 9 different plays (as well as suggestions for “bonus passages”). I was thoroughly inspired by Ken Ludwig’s obvious love of Shakespeare and convinced that memorizing is the way to go if you want to really develop a love for and understanding of his work. This was somewhat of a revelation for me, as I have so far just read a few children’s versions of the plays to my kids, and while they have their place, I think now that the real beauty of Shakespeare is in the actual words he used and how he put them together. I want my kids (and myself!) to see and understand that, and not just know the plots of the various plays. I didn’t necessarily agree with all his ideas, and would probably delay introducing some of the plays and/or characters until my kids are older, but overall I learned so much from this book and would highly recommend it.
We learned his first suggested passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Miss A recited it at our Homeschool Showcase this spring. Now I need to choose a passage to memorize from Hamlet, our current Shakespeare play.
my kids are too young for it now, but i will be sharing this later with them!
She did a great job with it at the showcase! I liked this book a lot.