RAP-NOTES

About the Book

Rap-Notes: Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits Volume 1 is a short summary of five of the greatest plays ever written (at least according to my favorite high school English teacher): Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night’s Dream. But these are highly unusual summaries—they’re raps. They all rhyme, and they’re meant to be read with a funky beat. Some people like downloading the MP3s of the raps so they can read and rap along. And some people just want to make up their own beats in their head without help. Either way, this book is a great introduction to anyone who’s ever been a teensy, little bit scared around Shakespeare’s language. I hope this book will let you get to the heart of these classic stories and into the minds and hearts of their characters. And I hope you learn to love the Bard as much as I do and see that Shakespeare wasn’t just a mega-genius—he was cool!

About the Author

Mr. Z is the nom de plume of Bob Zaslow. (Although all his students at PS 41 in the Bronx don’t know him by any other name but Mr. Z.) He’s been writing lyrics since his college days, when he wrote a set of songs around the theme “Twisted Tales of Shakespeare.” Mr. Z was an advertising copywriter at Grey Advertising in New York for fifteen years, where he worked on everything from Prestone Antifreeze to Sprint Business to Maalox. (He wrote and produced more than one hundred “Maalox Moment” radio commercials.) His most recent play was performed Off-Broadway at the Bleecker Street Theatre, The Seed of Abraham, a musical, which received raves from the audience every night. His plays for children are distributed by CES, Creative Educational Services. And his documentary film, Nadine Valenti, Portrait of a Painter, has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was a Bronze winner at the American Film Festival. He’s also written many one-act comedies, four of which have been finalists at the Aery 20/20 Festival in Putnam County as well as one play at the Strawberry Festival in NYC. Mr. Z lives in the Hudson Valley area of New York.