Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Spiral-Bound | 2011-09-13

Laura Amy Schlitz Robert Byrd (Illustrated by)

★★★☆☆+ from 1,001 to 10,000 ratings

$13.79 - Free Shipping
Newbery Medal Winner! Step back to an English village in 1255, where life plays out in dramatic vignettes illuminating twenty-two unforgettable characters.

Maidens, monks, and millers' sons -- in these pages, readers will meet them all. There's Hugo, the lord's nephew, forced to prove his manhood by hunting a wild boar; sharp-tongued Nelly, who supports her family by selling live eels; and the peasant's daughter, Mogg, who gets a clever lesson in how to save a cow from a greedy landlord. There's also mud-slinging Barbary (and her noble victim); Jack, the compassionate half-wit; Alice, the singing shepherdess; and many more. With a deep appreciation for the period and a grand affection for both characters and audience, Laura Amy Schlitz creates twenty-two riveting portraits and linguistic gems equally suited to silent reading or performance. Illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings by Robert Byrd -- inspired by the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript, an illuminated poem from thirteenth-century Germany -- this witty, historically accurate, and utterly human collection forms an exquisite bridge to the people and places of medieval England.
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Original Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 96 pages
ISBN-10: 0763650943
Item Weight: 0.3 lbs
Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.3 x 9.1 inches
Customer Reviews: 3 out of 5 stars 1,001 to 10,000 ratings
Schlitz is a talented storyteller. Her language is forceful, and learning slips in on the sly.
--The New York Times

Bolstered by lively asides and unobtrusive notes, and illuminated by Byrd's stunningly atmospheric watercolors, [the monologues] bring to life a prototypical English village in 1255.
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Brilliant in every way.
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Outstanding.
--School Library Journal (starred review)

A vivid, convincing portrait of medieval adolescence.
--Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

A rewarding choice for performance or for reading aloud in the classroom.
--Booklist (starred review)
Laura Amy Schlitz is the author of the Newbery Medal-winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, the Newbery Honor Book and New York Times bestseller Splendors and Glooms, and several other books for young readers. A teacher as well as a writer, Laura Amy Schlitz lives in Maryland.

Robert Byrd teaches children's book illustration at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He is the author-illustrator of many books, including Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer; Finn Maccoul and His Fearless Wife; and The Hero and the Minotaur. He also illustrated Laura Amy Schlitz's first book for children, The Hero Schliemann, about the life of a nineteenth-century amateur archaeologist. Robert Byrd lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey.