Author of Shakespearean ‘Star Wars’ books visits Housel Middle School
The author who visited Housel Middle School on Friday didn’t hesitate to speak in the croaking voice of Yoda or in the refined British-sounding dialect of Obi-Wan Kenobi when he read excerpts from his books.
However, Ian Doescher noted his vocal chords have their limits.
“I’m not even going to try to do a Darth Vader voice to save us all some embarrassment,” he said.
Even with the voices, Doescher’s New York Times best-selling William Shakespeare’s Star Wars books don’t sound entirely like the blockbuster movies that inspired them with the soliloquies, dialogues and sonnets reminiscent of the Elizabethan world of The Bard himself.
But that didn’t stop the more than 600 students at the assembly from applauding after nearly every reading.
The books have allowed Doescher, who still works in marketing as a day job, to expand upon the world created by George Lucas that he grew up loving, he said. It’s also an opportunity to show young readers that Shakespeare isn’t so bad either.
“I’m pretty sure a lot of you already like Star Wars,” he said. “I really, really hope a lot of you will also like Shakespeare. He’s way better than I am.”
Friday wasn’t the first time Doescher had spoken with Housel students. Sixth-grade English teacher Craig Dickinson struck up a friendship with him on Twitter after reading his first book, Verily, A New Hope, during lulls between parent-teacher conferences about two years ago.
“I was literally laughing while I read it,” Dickinson said.
That friendship led to a video chat with several sixth-grade classrooms last year, but Doescher said he wanted to also make an in-person visit.
A Star Wars fan since he was a child, Doescher said his books were inspired after spending a weekend watching the original Star Wars trilogy followed by attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., and reading the mashup novel Pride, Prejudice and Zombies. He received the blessing from Lucasfilm, the company that owns the Star Wars copyright, after executives saw the first draft.
The books use a number of Shakespearean elements, from Elizabethan language to scenes reimagined as those from plays such as Hamlet. He’s also given speech to previously silent characters such as the droid R2-D2 and the monster that tries to eat the Millenium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back. He added in popular cultural references and has Yoda speak in haiku. The books have reached as high as No. 12 on the New York Times bestseller list.
“I always thought I’d write books, but I thought they’d be academic books,” Doescher told the Herald.
Some students got in on the action as well on Friday. Five from one of Dickinson’s classes read a scene from the first book during the assembly. Doescher brought an excerpt from one of his latest books, based on the three prequel movies released in the late 1990s through the 2000s and invited a student to read the scene with him.
Eighth-grader Alec Goodwin was quick to get his hand up and he was selected.
“I was ecstatic; I was blown out of my mind,” Alec, 14, said afterward. A big Star Wars fan, he said he hasn’t read Doescher’s books but plans to now.
Shakespeare only gets a light treatment in Dickinson’s classroom, as the English playwright’s work is mostly read at the high school level. But many students are intimidated by Shakespeare, Dickinson said, and these books are a way of easing students into his work.
“Shakespeare isn’t scary,” he said.
Doescher said he has some other non- Star Wars books planned, including a book of poems about fatherhood and a collection of other mashups involving classical authors and modern subjects, but that’s not because he’s tired of writing about Jedi knights, stormtroopers or battles in space.
“This has never felt like a chore to me, to sit down and write,” he said.
This story was originally published January 30, 2015 at 8:03 PM with the headline "Author of Shakespearean ‘Star Wars’ books visits Housel Middle School."