Shrunken Treasures: Literary Classics, Short, Sweet, and Silly

This book is made from classical literature – Jane Eyre, Hamlet, The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, Moby-Dick, A Thousand and One Nights, The Metamorphosis, and Remembrance of Things Past. The stories are shortened and put into poems. Most of them give you an idea of what the story is about, but some really change them – for example, the poem for Hamlet shows Hamlet as a dog, digging holes for everyone around him. So sometimes the poems are confusing. If you don’t already know the stories, you might be confused about what is happening or why; and if you do already know them, you will probably be confused at how the poem is really anything like the original story! But if you just read the poems without thinking about the original story, you will like them. The illustrations are fun and funny, with big, colorful animals with funny expressions. The illustrations really tell the stories best. The end of the book is a little bit about each of the original stories, which is really helpful. Even though this book is confusing, it is fun to read and it does make you want to read the originals!