A Midsummer Night's Dream (Manga Shakespeare Series)

by Kate Brown, William Shakespeare, Andy Huckle (Designed by)

Overview

The latest in the breakout series Manga Shakespeare, introducing teens to a new kind of Bard.

In one of Shakespeare’s funniest, most enduring stories, meddling fairies create unexpected love triangles among a group of teenagers. Hermia is in love with Lysander. Demetrius is in love with Hermia. Helena is in love with Demetrius. Add to the mix Puck, a fairy with a powerful love potion, and chaos is sure to follow. Now everyone’s in love with Helena, Hermia is hopping mad, and the fairy queen Titania is in love with a man with a donkey’s head! Using the style and visual language of manga, Kate Brown transforms Shakespeare’s world into something new and vibrant. It’s the perfect introduction to Shakespeare’s work for reluctant readers and manga fans alike.

F&P level: Z

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810994751
Publisher:	ABRAMS
Publication date:	06/28/2008
Series:	Manga Shakespeare Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Kate Brown graduated with distinction from England’s only sequential-illustration course, specializing in graphic novels. Her work has been published in the Best New Manga series, and she has completed work for The Girly Comic.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 7 Up -Shakespearea's classic play is retold with a significant effort by the publisher to preserve the language and tone of the original. And ita's a successful effort; the dialogue remains mostly intact and Browna's clever layouts do a good job of both staging the action and providing a well-paced breakdown of the Shakespearean English, so that new or young readers will be better able to comprehend the sometimes-arcane language. However, Brown has a curious tendency to have the flow of word balloons drift from right to left. With this OEL adaptation paging from left to right, this occasionally makes the pages mildly confusing to read. An additional distraction is the decision to have the play set in an alternate world where people dress in Roman robes over mod-style shirts and trousers, and where futuristic telecoms exist alongside antique swords. And while the figure work may not be everyonea's cup of tea-the boys are cute in a yaoi sort of way, while the girls have a wide-eyed awkwardness, and noses disappear and reappear continually-the storytelling and layouts show a high level of craft and succeed in portraying much of the humor of the play.-Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH

School Library Journal

Of late many classic titles-including the Bible-have been turned into manga, in a 21stcentury version of the venerable Classics Illustrated comics. This take on the Bard boils his play down to approximately 20 words per page, drastically abridging the text, though keeping intact the original language and meter. A fully colored dramatis personae reduces the characters to sound bites and shines in comparison to the flat, graytoned images that murkily tell the story itself. As drawn by Brown, the characters are decidedly more Westernlooking in their styling than is typical to most manga, and the adaptor's choice of setting is an anachronistic mishmash of quasiantique and modern, a choice that will leave sophisticated readers knowledgeable with the text slightly puzzled. The Tempest (9780810994768), drawn by Paul Duffield, follows an identical template. These attempts to convert Shakespeare into visual language fall flat, although the slick manga styling alone may attract some new readers to these works. (plot summary, author's biography) (Graphic fiction. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews