Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Will's Quill: A Shakespeare-Related Children's Book by the Author of Corduroy

Freeman, Don. Will's Quill. New York: Viking, 1975.

Don Freeman, the author of Corduroy, Dandelion, Norman the Doorman, and other favorites, also wrote and illustrated a children's book set in Shakespeare's London.

It's good—despite the faux-Elizabethan dialogue that is a bit strained: "Forsooth, it does seem life is full of woe, e'en for a lowly goose," as you can see in the image above (to enlarge the image, simply click on it).

However, it's not without its multi-age humor. When the man we first meet in the image above offers the goose (our protagonist) some berries, he says, "Here, my friend . . . . Thy need is greater than mine," making us wonder if we've run up against Sir Philip Sidney.

The gentleman turns out to be Shakespeare himself. And Willoughby Waddle (for that's the name of our heroic goose) saves the day in a manner that I will not reveal to you. I'm afraid you'll have to track down Will's Quill to satisfy your curiosity. I will say this: It has something to do with a quill from a goose and William Shakespeare.


Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

3 comments:

Arno de Bruijn said...

"IT'S not without ITS multi-age humor"

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

kj said...

Oh, dear. Quick posts without editing lead to terrifying errors.

Thanks for catching that, Arno!

kj

Duane Morin said...

I'll have to be on the hunt for this one. A quick spin through Amazon shows that it's available from individual resellers (not my favorite way to buy things), and Powells does not have it.

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

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