Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare

by Peter Vennema and Diane Stanley

Book Overview

William Shakespeare was the son of a glovemaker, a small-town boy with a grammar school education. Yet he grew up to become the greatest English-speaking playwright in the world. Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare is both his story and that of a great art rediscovered in the modern world. Drama had been forgotten since the days of ancient Greece, but it reemerged in Elizabethan London with the building of the first modern theater. Its...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688091083
• ISBN13: 9780688091088
• Release Date: August 1992
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 48 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 9.3" x 11.0"
• Age Range: 6 to 10 years
• Grade Range: Grades 1 to 5

Customer Reviews

Diane Stanley = my favorite children's biographer

I feel like I could start any review for a Diane Stanley biography like this: ________ is the perfect introduction for any child interested in learning about ___________! That said... Bard of Avon is an excellent introduction to the biography of William Shakespeare. It gives you basic facts without getting too involved in theory. My favorite new fact is a list of words Shakespeare invented by writing them into his plays. In addition to "eyeball," which I already knew, he also made up: majestic, countless, hint, hurry, reliance, leapfrog, gust, excellent, and gloomy. Awesome! Diane Stanley hits it out of the park every time, truly. I'm a huge fan.

Truly brings Shakespeare to life!

Stanley does a masterful job of bringing Shakespeare to life in this short biography. Full of wit, the workings of the theater and a few of the details behind some of Shakespeare's more popular works, older children will greatly enjoy this book. A must-have for homeschoolers beginning a study of the Bard of Avon!

Watch for this Author she's a Gem!

This author was new to us and we will be looking for her from now on. The pictures are sooo wonderful they transport you. The information is well done and clear, yet not watered done. This is someone that REALLY understands writing books for children that adults can enjoy using as teachers or parents. I recently bought alot of books on Shakespeare, for use in the school room this year and we have found 4 authors that made the grade on this subject! This is a keeper!

Diane Stanley Is The Queen Of Longer Picturebook Biographies

Stanley is a masterful writer/illustrator when it comes to creating longer picturebook biographies (with heavier text). Her bios on da Vinci, Cleopatra and Shakespeare are fabulous. It amazes me that she has not won a Caldecott Honor yet! I can't wait to see her bio about Michelangelo!

Excellent children's biography

Our family has recently discovered the wonderful Peter Vennema/Diane Stanley biographies. They are vivid, engaging, and thorough, yet short enough for younger readers to sit through (my daughters are 4 and 6). Bard of Avon and Good Queen Bess are our favorites so far, and they go very well together since neither Shakespeare nor Queen Elizabeth would have been the same without the other. Unlike other histories or biographies for children, this book makes a destinction between what we know about Shakespeare's life and times and what are only guesses. It is nice for children to see that the study of history is not just memorizing facts and dates, but piecing together clues in the context of what is known about a time period. As a former high school English teacher, I wish that I had had this book when I was teaching Shakespeare plays because it would have been a wonderful introduction.