Written by: Dianna Cleveland
Illustrated by: Liliane Grenier
This Playbook® adaptation presents authentic Shakespearean text in current spelling and punctuation, while at the same time provides a modern, engaging, and relatable reading and literary experience for students. As the famous play occurs in the late 1500's, modern-day Romano and Julia interact with the events through a little magical transportation. They then become helpful guides to understanding the story as they watch it unfold. This becomes possible when Julia, a Shakespeare enthusiast, discovers an old abandoned theater in the park. As she pretends to be a fair maiden, spinning around inside a ray of sunshine glowing down on the stage like a spotlight, she is magically transported to the late 1500’s. There, she realizes that no one can see her and she is watching the legendary play take place before her eyes. Although it seems impossible and quite unlikely that a play would come to life, the characters and events seem very real. So, she decides to enjoy it as the best Shakespearean performance she's ever seen. Back at school, she befriends a new student, Romano, who has never read a Shakespeare play, but has to choose a favorite for an essay he must write for class. Julia decides to take him with her into the sunshine spotlight to experience Shakespeare first hand. As Romano consistently misinterprets character dialogue (providing some comedy to this tragedy), Julia enlightens him all along the way to bring understanding to the characters, romance, and Shakespeare’s puns and metaphors. Nine readers embark on this magical journey of reading and acting out "Romeo & Juliet" while two modern characters/readers bring relevance and meaning to it.
For 2 - 9 Readers
Average of Stages 6
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