Spanking Shakespeare

Jake Wizner’s (2007) novel, Spanking Shakespeare, is about Shakespeare Shapiro. He is about to begin his senior year and his main concerns are popularity and females. He believes that the two are related. In order to be popular, he needs to win the award for best senior memoir and find a date to prom. However, in order to get a prom date, he needs a girlfriend. In order to get a girlfriend, he needs to be popular. Thus, his life is quite complicated, as many adolescents feel their lives are. The novel portrays the struggles that many high school students experience. Some key themes are relationships, sexuality, drugs, suicide, growing up, and social status/popularity in school. These are all issues that adolescents have to deal with. The novel demonstrates the many decisions that young adults today must face. By reading Spanking Shakespeare, adolescents have the opportunity to decide how they would deal with these choices and situations before they must experience them in real life.