Romeo and Juliet

by William Shakespeare

Book Overview

Read Shakespeare in graphic-novel form--with NO FEAR

No Fear Shakespeare Graphic Novels is a series based on the translated texts of the plays found in No Fear Shakespeare. The original No Fear series made Shakespeare's plays much easier to read, but these dynamic visual adaptations are impossible to put down. Each of the titles is illustrated in its own unique style, but all are distinctively offbeat, slightly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1411498747
• ISBN13: 9781411498747
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Sparknotes
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

great starter for classics

Written in "modern English". My 10 years old told me he wanted to know the story of Romeo and Juliet. Still a bit long for him to read, but he really enjoys it. The graphics are pretty good, and the format of presenting such a classic is fantastic. He is still interested to give it a try (later) in "older English).

Great Item

As a teacher on the high school level, this has proved to be extremely valuable!

Excellent (Against All Odds)

This graphic novelization of Shakespeare's most famous -- but maybe not his best -- play absolutely stunned me. I've already read the play twice and seen I-don't-know-how-many recreations on stage, in film, and on television, and so I confess my expectations for this newer interpretation were quite low. What fresh air could a graphic novel possibly breathe into a story so common it's become a cliche? You'll be surprised. Or at least I was. For one thing, the artwork is fabulous: beautiful, inventive, playful, modern. For another, the novel uses modified English that communicates Shakespeare's themes clearly but doesn't water them down. This version of the play will be an exciting tool in my classroom -- already I wish I had bought thirty copies instead of just one -- but more than that, it is a piece of art in itself. When I hit the last page, when the Capulets and the Montagues finally reconciled their age-old rivalry, I felt my eyeballs burn with tears, as though I were reading Romeo & Juliet for the first time. It's that good. Highly recommended, even if you're not an English teacher who, like me, is just looking for stuff to help him teach the play for the first time.

No Better Way to Read or Teach Shakespeare

Can't imagine a better way to read or teach Shakespeare than the No Fear Shakespeare concept....orginal text on the left hand page, contemporary "translation"--our language--on the right hand page. The tragic beauty of Romeo and Juliet gets better time. Young love is still young love, but the older one gets, the more young love is apprectiated, the youth of the lovers, their hopes, their dreams, their obsessions, their foolishness, their folly and, yes, their endearments and their commitment to honor and to each other. There is a reason Shakespeare never disappoints and this is one of them...and having the original text and the easily understood text right next to it makes this play especially moving and enjoyable. The reader may well be surprised at how many quotes we take forgranted in modern laguage and idiom come from this play.

Shakespeare Made Simple

I'm a lifelong Shakespeare fan who has recently discovered the No Fear series of "translations" of the plays. Although I had considered myself comfortable with Elizabethan dialect, I've learned a lot from the No Fear books. However, especially in Romeo and Juliet, one is struck by how the pleasure in reading the play is in the language, not the plot. Side-by-side with modern English, Shakespeare's poetry is even more luminous.