Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet for Kids: 3 Short Melodramatic Plays for 3 Group Sizes (Playing With Plays)

I'm raising a family of boys.They are goofy, sweet, romantic, and messy: of course! They're fun to be around, and they make most of their own fun.Brendan Kelso makes it easy for them to play with Shakespeare. His creative retelling, keeping some of the best quotes and adding goofy slapstick, ropes in boys. They laugh and speak Shakespeare so naturally. Because it's fun for them.The three plays in this book require a minimum of 6players - in my family, that means a couple of friends get roped in, and maybe even Dad. ( Listening to my kids teach their friends Romeo and Juliet is a joy. Listening to my kids throw Shakespeare quotes around at mealtime: Bliss.)Have a lot of fun with this book. It is perfect for : family reunions, coed dinner parties/game nights, thanksgiving entertainment. Super easy path to laughter.My oldest says: the nurse in this isn't as funny as she should be. Mercutio's death scene should be funnier. And "Wherefore" means "WHY?", not where. (And he's right.)Thank you, Mr. Kelso!

I'm pretty sure that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. I even explained in detail to my fifth grade students WHY it was a tragedy. So, what made them laugh uproariously when I read this playbook to them, and beg me to allow them to perform it? Brendan Kelso's writing, of course! Even kids with stage fright will not be afraid to be in this play...after all, there's sword fights, great death scenes, lots of humor, and a marriage that ends in a "high five".As an elementary school gifted resource education teacher, I wanted my students to be aware of William Shakespeare and his contributions to the world of writing. I hoped to give them just enough background knowledge to make middle and high school Shakespeare units exciting for them. It was difficult to find Shakespearean resources for elementary school students, and I was fortunate to find this resource through Amazon.com.Kelso takes Shakespeare's masterpieces and turns them into modern day plays, incorporating Shakespeare's most famous lines. His books feature three ten minute plays, built around cast size. I have all of his books (and REALLY need him to finish Julius Caesar and move on to Hamlet) and I am thoroughly enjoying using them with my students. I can't recommend them highly enough! They are teacher/student friendly and economically priced. In addition, the website for the series has a plethora of resources for lessons on Shakespeare. So, "SHAKE UP" your class and purchase this series. Your students will thoroughly enjoy it!

Fantastic little book. Kids loved it! Despite being easy to use and perform, still retains so much of the original text! Have ordered many of the others also!

Last summer my colleague and I decided that we would spend some of class hours doing Shakespeare for our secondary school students to develop their pronunciation and to have fun beyond class hours doing written grammar exercise. We both did a lot of online search to find the best script (and hopefully, free) for our class, starting with keywords such as "Shakespeare for kids" "Romeo and Juliet for kids". After I found out about this book on Amazon.com and the website playingwithplays.com, I stopped the search for a free script and bought Brendan's Romeo and Juliet's script happily while my colleague spent more hours looking for a free one (I didn't tell him I bought the script). Then we compared with what he got with this script, we both agreed that this one would be selected due to its sense of humor and language appropriateness for ESL language learners. Besides, this version contains detailed instructions for body expressions as well as movement which I found extremely useful because I am not a drama teacher; I'm an ESL teacher so drama is definitely not my water although I've directed several plays in the classroom. And our students got hooked! We hadn't imagined that Shakespeare could be that fun and achievable (thanks to Brendan's creative adaptation) while uttering some Shakespeare's original lines (the underlined lines in the script, also a great effort from Brendan for keeping its authenticity to some extent)Final say, a strong recommendation for those who are looking for the best deal of "Romeo and Juliet for kids".

I directed Romeo & Juliet for Kids for a competition piece with 5,6,7 and 8 graders. I loved the flexible casts! The intimidation of Shakespeare's language was completely set aside by the cast as Mr Kelso makes the language clear and yet is still able to incorporate several of the most famous lines the Bard wrote. The kids were very interested as to why things were put the way they were at that time - for example: "Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?" - wow - that was the line that really fascinated them and the provenance thereof. I heard it around the school for several weeks afterwards!Another example: all the kids had heard Juliet's balcony lament - but now they learned that "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" doesn't mean "Romeo where are you?", it means "why are you called Romeo Montague - the enemy"! Boy - were they surprised but the lights went on!! It made them more attuned to other similar lines. The kids also really enjoyed the stage fighting, dying and over-the-top performances the script required. I applaud Mr Kelso with his affinity for this age group and for enabling these children to look forward to reading Shakespeare in later years for school.

This book contains three versions of the play for groups of 6 to 11 actors, 9 to 13 actors, and 14 to 18 actors. The authors goal is to make the stories easy to understand for children, it is Brendan Kelso words with a splash of Shakespeare's lingo. He encourages actors to improvise rather than memorize the lines verbatim. The text is modernized for example including references to email. Fun and well done! Romeo and Juliet is everyone's favorite!Ali Julia review

This was a really great resource for a Year 6 end of term performance on film. Easy to adapt to different numbers of children and a great mix of lines from the original mixed with modern day language. Used the 1968 Zeffirelli film version for inspiration.

Pour mes élèves... Je suis très satisfaite de mon achat.

Did a version with a grade 6 class. They loved it, I loved it and the performance was well received. An amazing learning experience.

Ich kann dieses kleine Büchlein uneingeschränkt empfehlen! Habe schon mehrere dieser „Playing with Plays“ - Shakespeare -Bücher in meinem Unterricht verwendet und sie sind immer sehr gut von den Schülern angenommen worden! Die Sprache ist verständlich und vor allem altersgerecht ohne dabei die Verbindung zum Originaltext zu verlieren!Super Sache! Kaufempfehlung!

Great resource for getting young children interested in Shakespeare. We used it with a mixed ability group of 7-8 year olds and got great results. It helped to have some props handy - masks, toy swords, etc.