Come Like Shadows by Welwyn Wilton Katz Date of Publication: 2000 ISBN: 1550501704 Number of Pages: 318

REQUIRED READING ABILITY: High
GENRES: Fantasy, Horror
THEMES: Good versus Evil, Appearance versus Reality, Coming of Age, Responsibility, Loyalty, Revenge, Life versus Death

SUMMARY:
The story begins with a prologue of sorts, where the reader meets the famous Scottish king, Macbeth. The real Macbeth has apparently fallen victim to some ominous plot conceived by the three witches, and through his eyes, the reader learns that he and the eldest of the witches is captive in a looking glass. The reader watches as Macbeth goes through time in this mirror, and witnesses the hag twisting history to manipulate Shakespeare into writing his masterpiece, Macbeth, with the truly noble ruler cast as the villain in the piece.

When the second chapter begins, the story has caught up to the present. The protagonist, Kincardine O’Neil, is sixteen and spending the summer at Ontario’s Stratford Festival. She has been hired as an assistant to her family friend, the director, Jeneva Strachan. Kinny is convinced that she wants to be an actress, and her summer helping Jeneva with “the Scottish play” is intended to teach her the ropes. One of Kinny’s jobs is to find props for the play, and she is thrilled when she stumbles upon a wonderful old hand mirror in an antique store in Stratford. Unfortunately, this mirror is the actual mirror from the time of Macbeth, and with its arrival, trouble soon follows. After a series of tragedies and accidents strike the production, Kinny and her new friend Lucas begin to suspect the new head witch is more than she appears. There also seems to be a strange hunched figure following Kinny, and appearing at the same time as the accidents occur. Kinny finds herself strangely drawn to the mirror, and it turns out she is not alone in this fascination. Jeneva becomes more and more volatile, and when the cast heads to Scotland to perform the play in Macbeth’s own country, things come to a climax. Will Kinny and Lucas be able to foil the plan of the witches, or will Kinny, like Macbeth and other innocents before him, be left in the grasp of their evil forever?

WHO WOULD LOVE THIS BOOK? A kid who...

• is interested in Shakespeare and/or Macbeth
• is interested in drama and theatre
• is interested in Stratford and/or the Stratford Festival in Ontario
• wants to be an actress or director
• likes stories of magic and danger
• likes elements of horror and/or murder that appears “accidental”
• believes objects can be “haunted”
• likes the idea that truth can lurk in fiction
• likes strong writing with motif and symbolism used well
• is a bit of a loner
  

WHAT ELSE?
This book has won numerous awards and accolades, including being shortlisted for the Young Adult Book Award, from the Canadian Library Association, being chosen as a Resource Links Bestseller two years in a row, and making the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teenage List in 2002. It is a perfect book for students who like symbolism and good ghost stories told well, and is a wonderful way to introduce students to Macbeth and Shakespeare. It also provokes much discussion because of the ambiguity of the supernatural occurrences. There are scenes of accidental death and violence, but they are not graphically portrayed.

Welwyn Wilton Katz lives in London, Ontario and enjoys speaking to school groups.

RELATED LINK:
Teacher’s Guide