ABSTRACT
“You don’t mess with the great Bard, Marcia.” This was the response of my editor when I first proposed a Shakespeare retelling. But children’s authors have been messing with “the great Bard” since 1807 when Charles and Mary Lamb published Tales from Shakespeare Designed for the Use of Young Persons. Remarkably, this book is still in print as Tales from Shakespeare. It is the book that drove me to beg my editor to allow me to do my own retelling. The fact that I was finally given the go-ahead to “try it, Marcia,” showed great courage on the part of the publisher and, as I soon came to realize, blind optimism on mine.
