Hamlet is not OK

Six months after 15-year-old Selby stops doing her homework, her mother and father return from a parent-teacher conference in a rage, banning her from television, computers, and music, while hiring her older brother's nerdy friend, Dan, to tutor her. Selby's flippant disregard for the classics is balanced by Dan's unabashed appreciation for them, an interesting dichotomy that leads to several disagreements and amusing scenes. Dan insists that she read Hamlet aloud, an exercise that magically transports both to the Elsinore Castle ramparts in sixteenth-century Denmark, where they watch Hamlet's father's ghost appear and denounce his murderer. Later, they take two of the characters traveling through time, a reckless course until they learn to harness their powers and respect the course of literary history. First published in Australia, the book offers a refreshingly different, wildly imaginative take on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Seen through Selby's and Dan's eyes and including their unscripted conversations with individual characters, the play's many acts of violence seem tragic indeed, but is it ethical to interfere with what's happening? Teens who have read, watched, or studied Hamlet may be in the best position to enjoy the novel, but others will be captivated by Selby and Dan's adventures as well as Spratt's irrepressible humor.

Sixteen-year-old Selby Michaels isn't a reader, something that her bookish family--which also owns the town's local bookstore--has never understood. Her parents are especially irate when they find out she hasn't been handing in school assignments. Much to Selby's dismay, they insist on hiring her older brother's nerdy best friend Dan, 18, to tutor her. When reading Hamlet aloud, Selby and Dan suddenly find themselves transported into the world of the play. Upon meeting the titular protagonist, Selby can immediately tell that Hamlet is very much not okay and worries about the violence that both the figure and the play seem to promise. Meanwhile Dan, who's thrilled to be inside Shakespeare's imagination, is happy to continue Selby's tutoring as the duo navigate what comes next. Selby's frustration at feeling invisible in her small Australian town feels palpable, and her passion for decreasing Hamlet's body count is enjoyably odd. By employing chatty prose, Sprat (the Friday Barnes series) compellingly presents the play--and the extra-literary complications of dealing with an angry and depressed Hamlet and a heartbroken Ophelia--making for a cleverly pleasant modern take on Shakespearean themes and humor. Selby is white; Dan is of Zimbabwean descent. Ages 12--up. Agent: Stephen Barbara, InkWell Management. (Mar.)

A reimagined Hamlet with a modern twist. Selby, like many 16-year-olds, struggles with reading Shakespeare, and her marks in English class show it. A quirky Australian girl from a small town, she has a penchant for taking off her shoes in class. Whenever Selby, who's cued white, reads, it's a "word scramble" (a learning disability is hinted at, but that element isn't developed in the book). While 18-year-old Dan, a bookish Black friend of her brother's, is tutoring her, Selby's reading of Hamlet transports them both into the world of the play, and they witness the tragic storyline unfolding firsthand. The novel uses snippets of the original Shakespearean language alongside explanatory dialogue to make the text accessible, with explanations from Dan and Selby's English teacher uncomfortably intruding upon the narrative at times. Early on, Spratt introduces a motif about the power of imagination, which invites readers to suspend their disbelief when Selby's voice somehow creates a magical portal into early-modern Denmark. The work uses farcical humor and casual contemporary language, and the author makes a worthy attempt to balance both the adult and teen voices, creating an educational alternative to easy-to-read Shakespearean adaptations. Despite some inconsistent characterization and dialogue that leans into telling rather than showing, the book presents a convincing argument for Shakespeare's value in modern-day classrooms, even for struggling readers. A time-travel story designed to bring Shakespeare to life that educators may find useful. (Speculative fiction. 12-16) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.