Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare gives a quick synopsis of seven of the plays in humorous comic strip format. For a quick introduction to the types of stories in the plays, this is a good start.
Beverly Birch's retellings are longer and keep more of the poetic language and supporting characters. But the stories are long, so it took us three days to read through The Tempest. We then followed that up by watching the animated short from Shakespeare's Animated Tales. I actually thought the animated short was pretty well done, so we'll use some more of them after we read more of the stories.
We read two picture books that didn't really add much. These could be skipped.
And both of the kids said that the Shakespeare Can Be Fun! series are "confusing" and I agree with them. We won't be trying to read any of these again. Which is too bad, because there is a huge series of these books.
Next up: The Lamb version of the Shakespeare tales. And some puppet making time, too!
These might be a little old yet for your kids, but my daughter loved the No Fear Shakespeare series. It really helped her understand the plays.
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