The Who Was? series is an excellent way to teach students about a variety of people--both living and deceased. I chose to read Who Was William Shakespeare? because my eighth grade students read Romeo and Juliet at the end of the year. We always do an "introduction to Shakespeare" activity, but I was curious about the information included in this particular book.

Who Was William Shakespeare? is a quick one-hundred page read with an abundance of black and white illustrations throughout. It details Shakespeare's life from his birth, to his influence in theater, and ultimately to his death. It's written on a third grade level, but I would choose excerpts to share with my eighth graders as background information. I especially like the inclusion of words/phrases that Shakespeare coined and pictures of the Globe Theater.

This book is a WOW! book for me because it covered Shakespeare's life in a story-like way. It's playful and whimsical in places, but the content is the same as the higher level articles about Shakespeare that I've used in the past. This style would engage students in Shakespeare, and I think the effect will be that they are more interested in tackling and understanding his plays! I'm excited to try it out this school year.

I like that book, but I don't like that they don't know everything, it's not the authors fault, but, ya

Good biography of Shakespeare. Unfortunately, very little is even known about Shakespeare to begin with!

Cute introduction to nonfiction.

My son and I read this together. It was assigned by his new 3rd grade teacher as part of his summer work. Whoever wrote this knows exactly how 8 year old little boys think. Spending a few pages on the plague, spending a few pages on the court and kings and queens, and sort of skimming over more of the details of Shakespeare's actual life - my son LOVED it. Chapters were the perfect length for his reading level and it was easy to read in 2-3 days and held his interest the entire time. This is a great read for that age to get them interested!!!!

Ah, I love how interesting Who HQ makes biographies! I loved this one, and I can't wait to get started on Shakespeare's works!

My rating: 4 stars.
2 stars for how interesting it was.
2 stars for the person they wrote about.

(Bear with me, I'm not used to writing reviews on non-fiction books

This is a quick biography on one of the world's most famous playwrights and provides some great details about Shakespeare's life, while leaving readers wanting to know more. The book also contains lists of the words and phrases attributed to Shakespeare, which may surprise readers (eyeball, love letter and majestic, to name a few). Great for those who like reading about the lives of others!

So this isn't very biographical, instead it reads more like an annotation of all of his plays and poetry with an occasional tidbit of speculation about his life, family, finances, and character. Essentially it was too early to have anything written about Shakespeare with an air of mystery still surrounding whether Christopher Marlowe wrote everything Shakespeare claimed to write.

What it does instead is aligns what was happening in real life to some of what ended up in the plays and how they were performed. I had even just learned about bearbaiting in another book so to see that as a form of entertainment wasn't surprising, so it's nice to know that I do learn things!

I will definitely check out more in this series knowing that it seems similar in content to the Wicked History series in that they are providing some well-researched facts without being overwhelmed by a 400-page book instead delivering the basics about a person and the time period when they existed.

-penguin level3.0
-Time 10/12 30min 10/14 35min
-7 word summary Shakespeare-England-famous-Actor-made-many-play
Discussion question

Shakespeare borrowed some great play frow other play. He had great talents.

Q. Have you ever made or producted something which you think good?

A. When I was a junior high school student, I made another story of Urashima-Taro which is Japanese famous story in Japanese class.
I think that this is my good work.

Shakespeare's play is so good. Probably, many people know his play. Moreover he is very mysterious. I would like to know more about him.

cerita-cerita mudah dan ringkas perjalanan seorang shakespeare.

Now, I'm going to start this review by saying that I don't hate the Who Was series. I think they are one of the better children's biography series out there. It's hard to get young kids interested in history, and they do a pretty good job at it.

That being said, I wouldn't have even published this if I had been them. First off, writing any kind of anything about William Shakespeare is risky. There aren't many details about his life, and the ones we do know are questionable at best. Add that to the fact that this is a children's biography and therefore devoid of any of the juicy gossip that would make it interesting, which equals a boring and pointless books. Kids of this age level aren't going to care about Shakespeare, and those kids who do are going to walk right pass this and find something better. Definitely a miss for this series. Word of advice for the Who Is series: Stay away from anyone who lived before the 1700s unless you have really good information!

This is a great, quick read packed full of facts about Shakespeare's life, as well as some basic plot summaries of a few of his more famous plays. Along with Shakespeare's life, the book also provides some insight into other notable people along the way, such as Queen Elizabeth, Christopher Marlowe, and King James. I will definitely reread this book in a week or two to solidify the facts to memory, and I absolutely plan to read more books in this series.