Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing: A Graphic Novel (Classics in Graphics) - Softcover

Barlow, Steve; Skidmore, Steve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1445180111 ISBN 13: 9781445180113

Publisher: Franklin Watts, 2024

Synopsis

Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing like you've never seen it - or read it - before!

Classics in Graphics: Much Ado About Nothing has been adapted into a graphic novel by expert authors, Steve Skidmore and Steve Barlow, with illustrations by Wendy Tan Shiau Wei. The famous battle of wits and misunderstandings reads like your favourite film on the page - as confusion abounds, compounds and finally untangles.

Classics in Graphics is a series of graphic novels for children aged 10 plus that has inclusion at its heart, flinging wide the doors of literature for everyone to enter and understand. Including dyslexia-friendly design on every page, and encouraging readers to relate to these iconic roles - casting spells, falling in love and winning duels.

Each graphic novel includes pitch-perfect illustrations for presenting the tragic, the romantic, the comedic, the magical, as well as:

- snappy simplified text presenting Shakespeare's themes clearly
- introductory materials to help set the scene and context of each story
- heaps of extra material at the back to keep the learning and fun going, including an exploration of themes in the play, the language, Shakespeare's inspirations, the publication and performance of the play in history, a timeline of Shakespeare's life and works, and much more!

Plays available in the series include:
Macbeth
The Tempest
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado About Nothing

Praise for the Classics in Graphics series:
"Excellent production and binding, quality paper, and with fantastic writing and illustrations - an encouraging entry point to Shakespeare for my kids, and ease of dive-in for my own flighting or cursory storytelling engagement/whimsy [...] an excellent job converting challenging language and literary themes to make it very inclusive, smoothing ease of understanding dialogue, plot, and narration without dumbing it down. Each book has a wonderful appendix including notes on Shakespeare, relevant maps and themes (i.e. for example in Hamlet it goes deeper into its themes of Revenge, Madness & Mortality), and a glossary. For a graphic novel adaptation, I think these books are delightful. [...] They are wonderful and have quickly broken down the wall of "fear of Shakespeare" in my house as they are so easy to read and engage. And they have a really nice tactile production value, heft, and readability that makes broaching these often deemed difficult works, FUN. And of course, they are nice to look at." - EricWilliamson, www.leagueofcomicgeeks.com

About this title

About the Authors

As 50% of the Two Steves, Steve Barlow has written over 160 books with Steve Skidmore since their first appeared in 1988. Born in Crewe, he was educated at Crewe Grammar School, Warwick University and Nottingham University before a varied career in teaching, acting, stage management and puppetry. He worked in a village school in Botswana for four years before returning to the UK. The Two Steves have toured extensively in the UK and overseas, and to book festivals including Edinburgh and Hay. Their work for Hachette includes the popular I Hero choose-your-adventure books, and Classics in Graphics.

Steve Skidmore writes with Steve Barlow as Britain's most popular comedy writing and performing double act for young people - The 2 Steves! Steve Skidmore is shorter than Steve Barlow and less hairy. He was born in Birstall near Leicester in England. He went to Nottingham University to read English, but spent most of his time playing sport and doing a variety of jobs including counting pastry pie lids. He trained as a teacher of Drama, English and Film, before teaming up with Steve Barlow as a full-time author. He lives in Leicester and is a great rugby fan (Come on you Tiiigeeers!).

Wendy Tan is a Chinese-Malaysian artist, born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Drawing has always been her interest, but she only started to draw passionately during high school. Wendy then graduated from Saito College with a Diploma in Multimedia Design. Wendy's keen interest for storytelling began with film and animation during her time as a storyboard and visual development artist in the Malaysian animation industry. Wendy loves using illustration to tell stories, often using dramatic colour and light.

Edition details

• Publisher: Franklin Watts
• Publication date: 2024
• ISBN 10: 1445180111
• ISBN 13: 9781445180113
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 112
• Illustrator: Tan Wendy