A midsummer night's dream / adapted by Richard Appignanesi ; [illustrated by Kate Brown].

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Adapted by Kate Brown, A Midsummer Night's Dream is part of the series Manga Shakespeare, introducing teens to a new kind of Bard.



In one of Shakespeare's funniest, most enduring stories, meddling fairies create unexpected love triangles among a group of teenagers.



Hermia is in love with Lysander. Demetrius is in love with Hermia. Helena is in love with Demetrius. Add to the mix Puck, a fairy with a powerful love potion, and chaos is sure to follow. Now everyone's in love with Helena, Hermia is hopping mad, and the fairy queen, Titania, is in love with a man with a donkey's head!



Using the style and visual language of manga, Kate Brown transforms Shakespeare's world into something new and vibrant. It's the perfect introduction to Shakespeare's work for reluctant readers and manga fans alike.



Manga Shakespeare series:

Romeo and Juliet

Hamlet

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Much Ado About Nothing

Othello

Twelfth Night

Macbeth

Julius Caesar

Reviews provided by Syndetics

School Library Journal Review

Gr 7 Up-Shakespeare's classic play is retold with a significant effort by the publisher to preserve the language and tone of the original. And it's a successful effort; the dialogue remains mostly intact and Brown's clever layouts do a good job of both staging the action and providing a well-paced breakdown of the Shakespearean English, so that new or young readers will be better able to comprehend the sometimes-arcane language. However, Brown has a curious tendency to have the flow of word balloons drift from right to left. With this OEL adaptation paging from left to right, this occasionally makes the pages mildly confusing to read. An additional distraction is the decision to have the play set in an alternate world where people dress in Roman robes over mod-style shirts and trousers, and where futuristic telecoms exist alongside antique swords. And while the figure work may not be everyone's cup of tea-the boys are cute in a yaoi sort of way, while the girls have a wide-eyed awkwardness, and noses disappear and reappear continually-the storytelling and layouts show a high level of craft and succeed in portraying much of the humor of the play.-Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Among the publishers pelting readers with graphic-format Shakespeare adaptations is Abrams, whose latest release in the Manga Shakespeare series is the first comedy in that line. With its numerous lovers tricked by fairies into loving the wrong people, and an innocent weaver's head being changed into that of a donkey, the play packs in plenty of shenanigans. In this highly abridged form, with its very literal visual interpretation, the language's subtlety and humor is easy to miss. However, the swift pacing of the manga format will sweep young readers right into pages that spread the dialogue into the least dense and intimidating concentration possible. The delicate lines of the art (black and white except for eight pages of character introductions) have an appropriate otherworldly lightness that works especially well for the fairy figures. Although readers suspicious of Shakespeare may not be entirely convinced of the Bard's worth, this book is still a place to start.--Karp, Jesse Copyright 2008 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Of late many classic titles--including the Bible--have been turned into manga, in a 21st-century version of the venerable Classics Illustrated comics. This take on the Bard boils his play down to approximately 20 words per page, drastically abridging the text, though keeping intact the original language and meter. A fully colored dramatis personae reduces the characters to sound bites and shines in comparison to the flat, gray-toned images that murkily tell the story itself. As drawn by Brown, the characters are decidedly more Western-looking in their styling than is typical to most manga, and the adaptor's choice of setting is an anachronistic mishmash of quasi-antique and modern, a choice that will leave sophisticated readers knowledgeable with the text slightly puzzled. The Tempest (ISBN: 978-0-8109-9476-8), drawn by Paul Duffield, follows an identical template. These attempts to convert Shakespeare into visual language fall flat, although the slick manga styling alone may attract some new readers to these works. (plot summary, author's biography) (Graphic fiction. 13 & up) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.