Star Wars – Darth Vader (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I love, love, love the idea of Star Wars written as a Shakespearian play.
I originally checked the book out of the library. (When you through as many books as we do at The Booky Mom’s house you make a lot of trips to the library!). I started reading the hard copy version to Cinco (2nd grader) and he seemed interested by the idea. (We read a children’s version of mid-summer night’s dream for our mid-summer fairy festival! Fairy Day I, Fairy Day II, Fairy Day III. So he knows who Shakespeare is and he knows the language can sound rather funny). Immediately, Cinco told me he wanted to listen to a dramatized version of the play. We waited until it was available on Audible.com and bought it.
By doing this we missed the drawings in the book, but had the added fun of multiple narrators acting out the parts. It’s a fun concept and it’s an enjoyable listen for a little bit. It’s fun to hear Darth and Han speak in Shakespearian language. The author also does a nice job of using iambic pentameter.
But after about 90 minutes, the novelty of the idea wore-off. The audio version took on a been-there-done-that feeling. Plus with audio, having the stage directions read aloud is distracting, particularly when characters enter and exit frequently!
Finally, the movie is only 2 hours, but the audio story is more than 3. Really? It takes that much more time to tell the same story?
All and all, it’s a silly fun concept and if you love Star Wars or Shakespeare and want to try it out– Go for it. But, I think the book would be better because you get the pictures and you can skim it.
We bought this solar power kit (I got it for $4 new @ Goodwill– go figure) The kit was not quite as easy as they suggested it would be on the box. We had to use the glue gun to make sure all the parts stuck together, especially the Eiffel Tower–which would NEVER have stayed together without the glue gun!
We also made a wand for the fairy princess! But sadly, we did not have the time to make the bow and arrow. I guess that has to wait until tomorrow!
Even mom campers have to eat, so we went to Trader Joe’s. We didn’t let that car ride go to waste.We listened to Shakespeare for Children by Jim Weiss. It’s a children’s version of two of Shakespeare’s plays on the disk narrated by Jim Weiss. I love his CD’s and now you can you can get audio downloads of his work on Amazon, which is new and great! We listened to Midsummer Night’s Dream on the car ride. The story is a little confusing with so many changes in the love triangles.
I think reading the book with the kids and listening to another version of it will help them to figure out what is happening in the story.
The Booky Mom 