Review: YOLO Juliet by Brett Wright/Shakespeare and srsly Hamlet by Courtney Carbone/Shakespeare

Okay, thanks to Edelweiss and Random House Books for Young Readers for allowing me to read a sampler of these two titles.  Now, I am a little disappointed that it was only samplers, but that is fine. While I normally do enjoy books like this, I might not have made it all the way through, as I have actually read Romeo and Juliet.  But I think this could be a great way to help kids today understand Shakespeare.  Yeah, you could say it "dumbs" it down.  But, it's not any different to me than translating it into more modern words like the No Fear Shakespeare books do.

These are basically told through Romeo and Juliet texting each other, or else writing in diary mode on their phones.  They use normal texting abbreviations and terms, as well as emojis.  One of the exchanges between Romeo and Juliet that I love was like this:

Romeo:  Juliet, I swear on the

 

Juliet:  Wait, you swear on a piece of rock in the sky?  Um.

Romeo:  Okay, what should I swear on, then?

Juliet:  Maybe we shouldn't make any promises yet.  All of t his happened as fast as 

Doesn't that kind of look like fun?  Of course in the book each person's speaking part is in bubbles like in a text message.

So I would recommend this as a fun book for someone trying to understand Shakespeare as they read it.