Teachers and parents alike know the struggle of trying to get kids to read and enjoy the classics. Convincing adolescent readers to put the cell phone down and pick up any book, much less Shakespeare, is challenging enough. The issue lies not so much in the content of these works, but in the prospect of deciphering Elizabethan English to find the current issues in the old Shakespeare. 

Celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death this month with a special Wednesday #ILAchat at 8 p.m. ET on April 13.

Join Sharon Draper, an accomplished educator and New York Times best-selling author whose many achievements include the National Teacher of the Year Award, the Coretta Scott King Literary Award, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime literary achievement.

She will bring her expertise on using the Bard in the classroom to the Twitter chat with experience and tips.

Authors Brett Wright and Courtney Carbone will also be on hand to answer questions on how to make Shakespeare less intimidating and more entertaining. Their popular series OMG Shakespeare (Penguin Random House) makes the Bard’s works more accessible to teenagers by using modern jargon without sacrificing the core storytelling. Between the two, they have published four books in the series, including Macbeth #killingit, A Midsummer Night #nofilter, srsly Hamlet, and YOLO Juliet. All of these retellings are told in text and social media format, attracting wary readers by using teens’ own language.

Follow #ILAchat and @ILAToday at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, April 13 to join the conversation about updating timeless literary works to make the language more relatable to younger readers.  

Anyone who tweets using the hashtag will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of an OMG Shakespeare release.

Nicole Lund is ILA’s communication intern.