Fiction

Franklin's School Play (Franklin)

Franklin has been chosen to play the Nutcracker Prince in his class's production. But will he be too nervous to say his lines when the big night arrives?

Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was the son of a glovemaker, a small-town boy with a grammar school education. Yet he grew up to become the greatest English-speaking playwright in the world. Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare is both his story and that of a great art rediscovered in the modern world.

Drama had been forgotten since the days of ancient Greece, but it reemerged in Elizabethan London with the building of the first modern theater. Its impact can still be imagined today. There were the theaters, open to the weather and featuring neither sets nor curtains, but equipped with dramatic special effects. There were the companies of actors--the leading men, the comedians, the boys who played women's roles--and the playwrights who gave them all lines to say.

Best of all, there was William Shakespeare, who rubbed shoulders with noblemen and royalty as well as with the rowdy crowds at the foot of the stage. He was suspected of involvement in a treasonous rebellion, and his last play literally brought down the house when cannon effects set fire to the famous Globe theater and it burned to the ground.

Award-winning collaborators Diane Stanley and Peter Vennema have once again created a feast of words and pictures to celebrate the life of a remarkable person from the pages of history: William Shakespeare, a man for all time."

Hear, Hear, Mr. Shakespeare: Story, Illustrations, and Selections

In the sleepy English market town of Stratford-upon-Avon, poet and playwright William Shakespeare is at work tending his garden when a maiden and a lad stop by to announce that a merry troupe of players is approaching. The troupe, on its way to London, hopes to be invited to perform for the queen. The actors, however, are in need of a lively new play, and just maybe Shakespeare can help. In this fanciful and festive recreation of Elizabethan Stratford, Bruce Koscielniak brings the spirit of the times alive with fun-filled pictures and Shakespeare's own incomparable words, here made accessible to young readers.

Thanksgiving Day (Trophy Picture Books)

After Charlie's teacher reads a story about the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving, the class decides to act it out. Charlie is the Mayflower. Opposite a picture of Charlie decked out in a paper ship is the "page" from the book his teacher read, showing the Mayflower on a churning ocean. Everyone has a role: Pablo, Kate, and Evan are Wampanoags, the people who were already on the land when the Pilgrims arrived. Michiko, Sam, and Sarah are Pilgrims from England. On each two-page spread the children are shown in their costumes opposite a picture from the teacher's book. In a preschooler's simple, straightforward voice, one young Wampanoag says she is thankful that "her new neighbors were peaceful Pilgrims looking for a new land to live in, and not mean people looking for someone to fight with." A small Pilgrim adds her thanks that "the beautiful land of Massachusetts had enough good things for everyone." There's no room for cynicism in this genuinely warm, honest book about a time that, for a while anyway, was peaceful, with people who were capable of friendly coexistence. As in companion books Halloween Day and Show & Tell Day, Anne and Lizzy Rockwell make a special day fun and understandable for the youngest celebrants. (Ages 4 to 7) --Emilie Coulter

For the class play, Charlie is the ship called the Mayflower. He says, "I told how I was thankful that I tossed and rolled, and tossed and rolled some more, but didn't sink in the big waves far out at sea." In this early-picture-book companion to Show & Tell Day and Halloween Day, mother-and-daughter team Anne and Lizzy Rockwell celebrate the spirit of friendship and giving that started with the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people on the first Thanksgiving Day.

Me Tarzan

Nobody knew Dorothy could do such a tremendous Tarzan yell. Not Dwayne, Dorothy's enemy, who wants the part of Tarzan in the class play more than she does. Not Mr. Mooney, their teacher, who has no choice but to give Dorothy the part. Not Dorothy's parents, who are as uneasy as Mr. Mooney about it. Not even Dorothy! But when the uncontrollable urge comes over her--the smell of the jungle, the sense of raw, primitive emotions, the wildness--Dorothy lets out a Tarzan yell so loud, so effective, they all feel its incredible power. And so do the neighborhood animals.

More and more animals gather whenever Dorothy practices. Then the circus comes to town, and a puma escapes to Dorothy's yard after one of her yells. What will happen on the night of the play--which also happens to be the opening night of the circus--when Dorothy is determined to give the yell of her life?

Betsy Byars's lighthearted story is as exuberant and surprising as Dorothy's Tarzan yell.

Teen Idol

Ask Annie your most complex interpersonal relationship questions. Go on, we dare you!

All letters to Annie are subject to publication in the Clayton High School Register. Names and e-mail addresses of correspondents guaranteed confidential.

High school junior Jenny Greenley is good at solving problems ... so good she's the school newspaper's anonymous advice columnist. Even if solving other people's problems doesn't make her own -- like not having a boyfriend -- go away, it's still fun. But when nineteen-year-old screen sensation Luke Striker comes to Jen's small town to research a role, he creates havoc that even levelheaded Jenny isn't sure she can repair ... especially since she's right in the middle of it.

Can Jen, who always manages to be there for everybody else, learn to take her own advice, and find true love at last?

"

Ask Annie your most complex interpersonal relationship questions. Go on, we dare you!

All letters to Annie are subject to publication in the Clayton High School Register. Names and e-mail addresses of correspondents guaranteed confidential.

High school junior Jenny Greenley is good at solving problems ... so good she's the school newspaper's anonymous advice columnist. Even if solving other people's problems doesn't make her own -- like not having a boyfriend -- go away, it's still fun. But when nineteen-year-old screen sensation Luke Striker comes to Jen's small town to research a role, he creates havoc that even levelheaded Jenny isn't sure she can repair ... especially since she's right in the middle of it.

Can Jen, who always manages to be there for everybody else, learn to take her own advice, and find true love at last?

Rodeo Cowgirl! (Starring Barbie)

Barbie has landed the starring role in Rodeo Cowgirl!, a Wild West movie about a cowgirl who saves her family’s farm. This exciting storybook features foil and glitter on its photographic cover.

Christmas Star Called Hannah, A

Swan Lake (Little Golden Book)

BARBIE STARS AS Odette, the Swan Queen, in this simple, gorgeously illustrated retelling of the classic ballet. Girls will feel as though they have front-row seats to Barbie’s performance!

The Best of Shakespeare: Retellings of 10 Classic Plays (Iona and Peter Opie Library of Children's Literature.)

Yes, the name is familiar. E. Nesbit, who died in 1924, gave us The Railway Children and The Enchanted Castle. Now, with the publication of the Shakespeare stories she wrote (at their request) for her own children, adults and kids together can enjoy her fairy-tale prose in the retelling of 10 of Shakespeare's greatest stories.

If you aren't sure you remember which daughter Lear visited first, who was traveling with Macbeth when he met those witches, or just why Rosalind was wandering around in the forest dressed like a boy--check here. Wonderful on their own, these retellings are also great preparation for any early theater or film excursion into these timeless plays.

[The publishers recommend this book for ages 11 to adult, and they're right.]

At the heart of any great work of literature is a story. William Shakespeare's plays are no exception. His plays tell stories of kings and queens, of ghosts and witches, of romance and passion. But to get to the story at the heart of the plays, the reader must first work through Shakespeare's
language, a task often too great for younger readers (and for many adults). Now, in this new edition, E. Nesbit, the classic British children's author, brings ten of Shakespeare's greatest plays to life. She shakes off the burdensome complexity of Shakespeare's language and tells the stories at the
core of the plays. Sprinkled with her own dashes of wit and humor, her graceful, vivid retellings, using accessible language, are the perfect introduction to Shakespeare's work.
Nesbit's stories are also the perfect way for adults to brush up on the ins and outs of Shakespeare's plays. Who can remember the names of King Lear's three daughters? Was Romeo a Montagu or a Capulet? What, exactly, was Hamlet's problem?
All of these major works are included in this collection: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, and Twelfth Night.
The text is illustrated throughout with dramatic black and white photographs from modern productions of the plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Festival (Ontario, Canada), and the Folger Library's Shakespeare Theater, bringing the action and characters to life. Also included is an
afterword by Peter Hunt, a leading scholar of children's literature.
These retellings of the classic tales of one of the world's greatest playwrights remind us that it is never too early for Shakespeare.