Theatre for Young Audiences: 20 Great Plays for Children

this is a good book to introduce kids to the world of drama play and help to use their imagnation in the world of drama.

Coleman Jennings is known in the theatre world for his vast knowledge of plays for young audiences, and this collection of plays is an excellent one. Jennings combines great plays in this book, ones that audiences and actors love! Great scenes for the classroom or for enjoying at home. EVERY classroom teacher should own this book!

This book is like new--beautiful! Thank you! Came fast and safe.

I love this book! The plays are deep and meaningful. Normally, my students would never want to read something so deep but since it is a play they are more motivated to do so. I like it a lot better than using novels because most of the plays are fairly short at least for 5th graders and up (They're about 10-20 pages long). This perfect for pulling lessons about story structure, characterizations, themes, and whatnot without having to read a full length novel or a lower level picture book. There is a lot to discuss in these plays. For example, we are reading The Ice Wolf in class today. This is a story about a little Eskimo girl who is rejected by her community because she looks different and was almost threw out in the snow to die by her own father. We were about to discuss the father's internal struggle to follow the ways of his people and the love of his own daughter with my 5th graders. Plays seem to be great motivators for my kids to read and discuss literature in a deeper way. These plays allow you do so in a 'just right' manner. You are putting the kids over their heads with Shakespeare or dumbing it down too much with other kiddie plays out there. I would recommend this for Intermediate/Upper Grades.

The person who received this book as a gift loves the plays in it for their class.