Why Young Kids Should Read Shakespeare
- Priscilla Wong
- Mar 1, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 3, 2025
I admit, in all my homeschooling with the kids, we spent the most time on literature. I guess it’s assuring to know that this didn’t seem to restrict the development of their own personal interests—my older son still prefers the maths and sciences over English, and my daughter the visual arts.
In high school English, I absolutely relished stewing in compelling stories and beautiful language. Whether it was reading the scene when the black community stands up in the courtroom for Atticus Finch following Tom Robinson’s guilty verdict in To Kill a Mockingbird, or when Marc Antony gives his crowd-swaying speech following the assassination of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play, or whenever Hamlet springs into his introspective and philosophical ruminations—these stirring studies felt far more relevant to life than studying polynomials and trigonometry.
Steeping my kids in a literature-focused homeschool education is also a reflection of my belief that developing a strength in reading and writing prepares them well for almost any subject. The more you read, the better you read; the more you write, the better you write. The pool of ideas that swim around in their minds would flow more fluidly onto paper or screen when they have been—for years—subconsciously and consciously absorbing and assimilating the language of quality literature.
Exposing the kids to such literature would also minimize the feeling that there is literature that is inaccessible to them. Following the suggestions of Bauer and Wise’s The Well-Trained Mind, I have exposed them to beautiful retellings of classics (there are not-so-beautiful retellings, so be wary), such as The Odyssey, Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Pilgrim’s Progress, Les Misérables, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Shakespeare.
With one more young child to homeschool, I am entering another round of these retellings—and it feels just as delightful as the earlier rounds. This term, my youngest, in fourth grade, delved into the retellings of Shakespeare, his enthusiasm evident in his voracious readings of multiple retellings of the same play, his willingness and eagerness to watch the Shakespeare films, and his answer to my question, “Should we start another unit in the spring or keep doing Shakespeare?”—“Let's keep doing Shakespeare!”
The Bruce Coville retellings had been available at our local library when my older kids were homeschooled; however, this year when I went online to hold the Coville books for my youngest, none were available (I told the librarian how sad this was). I was willing to shell out the money to buy used copies of the out-of-print books, which I secretly hope will be read by subsequent generations of children in our family.
Teaching all of these years, I have observed that the student struggle to understand and appreciate texts, especially in the senior grade levels and university, is sometimes a result of the student’s limited exposure to notable literature. They miss the intertextuality and meaningful allusions, and, as a result, are unable to grasp the text’s context and significance. References to the Ten Commandments, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, Icarus, Prometheus, Montag, Orwell—all of which bring to bear valuable implications for a particular text's message. Recently while reading a news article in which the columnist questions whether there is method to a certain president’s madness, I called over my youngest and pointed out the sentence, testing him, “Where is this from?” He answered, “Hamlet!”
Several homeschooling families decided to host a presentation day last month for our fourth and fifth graders—on whatever subject they happened to be studying. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for my youngest to share his newfound enthusiasm with the group and spark others’ interest in why young kids should read Shakespeare. He wrote a guided essay with me: basically, I asked him a series of questions, and he orally gave me answers to those questions, which I then typed out for him (a child's self-expression shouldn’t be limited to only what he is able to write simply because he hasn't fully developed the fine motor, spelling, and grammar skills to record his ideas).
The attached essay/slideshow is a product of a six-month study of Shakespeare and a month-long process of dialoguing with my youngest and forming an essay with him. For the presentation, we spent several weeks learning how to create and design a slideshow using an existing template. When we were finally done, my son exclaimed, upon gazing at his work, “I am so proud of myself.” He presently says he wants to be a biotechnologist or biomedical engineer when he grows up—but I hope he will be one that loves literature.
May our time spent with Shakespeare this year be used to help others in tackling this weighty yet worthwhile body of works.
Comments