This is the second of the Hogarth Shakespeare series I've read. I find the premise (modern famous authors reworking the plots of Shakespeare's plays) fascinating; with a caveat. Because the reader (usually) knows the plot, major characters, and motivations behind the action, the only reason to read the book is to see what clever authors can do with a well-known story. The emphasis shifts from interest in the characters and story to judgement of the author's skills. So that's how I'll critique this and any others in the series I read. 
 If I were to rate this book on just story, I would have given it 2 stars. All the action takes place during a single day mostly on the playground of a 1970's white suburban Washington D.C. elementary school when a young black boy Osei (Othello stand-in) arrives, one month before summer recess. The sixth grade students are on the cusp of losing their "top of the heap" status when they go off to Jr. High in the fall. They're anticipating shuffling alliances and making new friends which causes some anxiety. The children are dealing with incipient adolescence, negotiating gender roles, and beginning to challenge adult authority. Osei, the son of a diplomat from Ghana, is also dragging the baggage of blatant racism and subject to all the micro aggressions of being the only black kid in a white school for the fifth time in as many years. He feels abandoned by his parents who insisted he attend this hostile environment and his beloved older sister who stayed behind in New York to finish her school with friends. 
 I felt it was a mistake to put all the adult emotions of love, betrayal, jealousy, and malevolent hatred on children. They cycled through the emotions in the blink of an eye: "going together" at recess and "dumping" each other at lunch. The character of Ian (Iago) was particularly troubling. I didn't know a single kid who actually thought through the damage they could do by their actions in the way Ian was portrayed as the manipulative spider in the center of the web, causing hurt because he could. Several of the other children seemed to have self-insight that I believe was far beyond their years. If I didn't know the story, I would have stopped reading because the children's actions were petty and predictable. 
 What carried me through was morbid curiosity. Would Chevalier take the story to its traditional tragic conclusion? Would these children murder each other and commit suicide? Could the author convince me this was a logical conclusion? No spoilers about whether the author achieved those ends. However, I did bump up the rating because I thought Chevalier did a great job of integrating the issue of race and how that affected the children and adults in the story. That was the piece missing from Shakespeare's Othello that Chevalier got right. 
 Note: I received a copy of this book from an early reader program in exchange for an honest review.