Shakespeare’s First Folio, All the Plays: A Children’s Edition
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Shakespeare’s First Folio, All the Plays: A Children’s Edition
As part of our yearlong celebration to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is working in partnership with the award-winning publishing house, Walker Books to produce a new folio for children to ensure his legacy is preserved for future generations.
Shakespeare’s First Folio, All the Plays: A Children’s Edition will include all 36 plays in the original volume, in the same order, and edited to be performed by 8-12 children, between 7-14 years of age, in under 20 minutes.
Abridged by Dr Anjna Chouhan, the Children's Folio will use all of Shakespeare’s language, meaning that children can access and enjoy every play in a fun context, learning weird and wonderful words like ‘sluggardise’, and ‘rampallion’, as well as famous lines including ‘friends, Romans, countrymen’, and ‘once more unto the breech’.
The book will be lavishly illustrated by Emily Sutton, whose previous titles with Walker include A First Book of the Sea, The Christmas Eve Tree and William Sieghart’s poetry anthology Everyone Sang. Described by The Times as “one of our greatest children’s illustrators”, Emily has meticulously researched each play using the SBT’s extensive collection, which includes weapons, domestic objects, textiles and early printed books as inspiration.
Shakespeare for Everyone
We want to ensure that every child has a positive first experience with Shakespeare and this new publication is another way we can engage and inspire children in an accessible way.
On publication, we will distribute 6,000 copies to schools and 3,000 copies to libraries across the country thanks to our partnership with Libraries Connected, at no cost, helping children to start their own journey with Shakespeare.
A series of free digital resources for teachers and educators are also being developed to maximise the impact of the children’s folio and will be shared with all participating institutions.
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If you are a school or library in the UK that would like to celebrate the wonder of books, the magic of the plays and the universality of Shakespeare’s language please use the button below to register your interest.
Illustrations © Emily Sutton. By kind permission of Walker Books Ltd.
Shakespeare’s First Folio, All the Plays: A Children’s Edition
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