Interview with Linda Williams Jackson for All the World’s a Stage: A Young Reader’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Characters

In today’s Author Spotlight, Jo Hackl chats with Linda Williams Jackson, a born and raised Mississippi Delta author of award-winning middle grade novels centered around some of Mississippi’s most important historical moments. Her first book, Midnight Without a Moon, centered around the Emmett Till murder, is an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book, a Jane Addams Honor Book for Peace and Social Justice, and a Washington Post Summer Book Club Selection. Her second book, A Sky Full of Stars, the sequel to Midnight Without a Moon, received a Malka Penn Honor for an outstanding children’s book addressing human rights issues and is a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year. The Lucky Ones, is inspired by Robert Kennedy’s 1967 Poverty Tour of the Mississippi Delta and is loosely based on the author’s own family’s experiences. The Lucky Ones is recognized by Good Housekeeping magazine as one of the best 50 kids’ books of all time. Her most recent release, Saving Jimmy, is a whimsical tale of a young girl’s journey to the afterlife. Her upcoming release, All the World’s a Stage: A Young Reader’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Characters, an illustrated guide to classic characters from Shakespeare’s plays introduces middle grade readers to some of the most famous kings, queens, fools, and fairies in literature. Broken into Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories, this compendium highlights twenty plays and teaches readers about some of Shakespeare’s most famous characters.

Interview Questions

JH: Welcome back to the Mixed-Up Files, Linda! Your new book, All the World’s a Stage: A Young Reader’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Characters, is a departure from your previous middle-grade novels. Can you tell us how the idea for this book came about?

LWJ: Thanks for having me back! It’s always an honor. I wish I could take credit for coming up with the idea for All the World’s a Stage: A Young Reader’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Characters, but the idea actually came from the publisher, Running Press Kids. Allison Cohen, the book’s editor, was looking for a writer for the project. When my agent inquired about my interest in writing the book, I quickly said, “Yes!”

JH: The last time you visited the Mixed-Up Files, you talked about the Shakespeare quotations woven through Saving Jimmy. You told us that after “What’s in a name?” popped into your head, you discovered that you could find a Shakespeare quotation to match each chapter in the book. Did working on Saving Jimmy help plant the seed for All the World’s a Stage?

LWJ: As I mentioned earlier, the project came through my agent. But, the fact that I had just published a book with Shakespeare-loving characters constantly quoting Shakespeare felt serendipitous, and it might have helped me seal the deal.

Statue of Henry “Hotspur” Percy

JH: Most readers know you for historical novels rooted deeply in Mississippi and in events that affected your own family and community. What was it like to move from writing historical fiction to creating an illustrated nonfiction guide—and from twentieth-century Mississippi all the way to Shakespeare’s England?

LWJ: Honestly, it was a little difficult at first because the fiction writer in me wanted to weave a little storytelling into the manuscript. However, I was told to stick strictly to the facts—but make them fun and engaging. So, I did. Interestingly, Mississippi and Shakespeare’s England do have something in common. Allegedly, the renowned Percy family of Greenville, Mississippi, claimed to be descendants of Henry “Hotspur” Percy, who is prominently featured in Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays—the plays that established Shakespeare as a playwright.

JH: Shakespeare can feel intimidating even to adults. What did you most want to do differently in introducing his work to young readers?

LWJ: Oh, boy. The tragedies were especially hard to write about for young readers. Shakespeare, as you know, had no trouble allowing characters to end their lives on their own terms. Even though I was very careful about how I worded these situations, my editor and I also felt it was necessary to include a trigger warning in the opening of the book. So, in terms of “doing differently,” I wanted to make sure I didn’t glorify the tragedy of the characters in any way. I’m not saying that Shakespeare glorified the tragedies. I know that, as a writer, he was simply giving the audience what they wanted.

JH: Which Shakespeare character surprised you the most once you began researching and writing about them?

LWJ: Ha! I thought I knew Shakespeare until I began working on the book. I found out I knew very little Shakespeare, so I think I was surprised mostly that so many characters across the various plays shared the same names, or very similar names. And many of the plays shared plot elements and themes. So I wasn’t as surprised by the characters as much as I was surprised by the plots.

JH: Is there a Shakespeare character who strikes you as particularly relatable to middle-grade readers today?

LWJ: Interestingly, I created personality quizzes for four of the plays—Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and The Tempest—so middle-grade readers will get to decide for themselves which characters are most relatable to them.

JH: On the flip side, was there a character who was especially difficult to explain to a young audience?

LWJ: There were three actually—Othello (Othello), Shylock (The Merchant of Venice), and Caliban (The Tempest). All three of these characters were subjected to racism in the plays. Even though Othello was the main character and portrayed positively, overall, his actions were quite disturbing. Caliban, on the other hand, was portrayed in a very negative way in The Tempest, but I don’t point this out in the book. And poor Shylock was treated so poorly that I was tempted to ask the editor if we could replace that play with another one. I skipped over it and had to come back to it at the very end and do the character sketches for it because the plot was so upsetting to me.

JH: Shakespeare remains deeply embedded in popular culture, from movies to contemporary music. Why do you think these characters and stories still keep resurfacing more than four hundred years later?

LWJ: Shakespeare’s plays and characters are very interesting—very entertaining as well. His body of work is immense. There are so many great quotes, so many great thoughts, so many interesting plot lines that his work will be used until the end of time.

JH: What do you hope happens after a reader closes your book?

LWJ: I hope that a reader will want to read some of the young-reader editions of Shakespeare’s plays. And I hope they will want to witness some of his plays if they are staged for a younger audience.

JH: What did writing this book teach you about Shakespeare that you didn’t know when you began?

LWJ: I had never actually studied the man himself, so I was surprised to find out that he died rather young (age 52) and that he has no living descendants. Only two of his three children reached adulthood, and only one of his grandchildren lived to adulthood. And that grandchild had no children. But I’m happy that his works of literature live on even if his direct lineage didn’t.

JH: And the question Mixed-Up Files readers always want answered: What are you working on next?

LWJ: I am back to historical fiction, the Mississippi Delta to be exact, 1939. 

Shakespeare Lightning Round

JH: No interview is complete without a lightning round, so here we go:

Comedy, tragedy, or history?

Comedy

Favorite Shakespeare play?

As You Like It

Favorite Shakespeare character?

Rosalind, As You Like It

Shakespeare character you’d most like to have dinner with?

Rosalind, As You Like It

Shakespeare character you would absolutely not want as a houseguest?

Iago from Othello

Best Shakespeare villain?

Iago from Othello

Favorite Shakespeare quotation?

“Et tu, Brute! (You too, Brutus?!)” -Caesar, Julius Caesar

Favorite Shakespeare insult?

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” -Puck, A Midsummer’s Night Dream

If you could give one Shakespeare character a completely different ending, who would it be?

Shylock, The Merchant of Venice

If Shakespeare could read one modern middle-grade novel, which one would you hand him?

Saving Jimmy by Linda Williams Jackson (I think he’d love reading about my Shakespeare-loving characters).

Jo: Thanks for chatting with us, Linda!