Laura Amy Schlitz doesn’t shy away from real-life tales of tough times in the Middle Ages
Laura Amy Schlitz would have preferred people come to her book because they heard it was well done—a fine piece of writing. Now they’ll come, she fears, mostly because of the gold medallion stamped on its cover marking it the 2008 Newbery Medal winner.
Schlitz, 52, a librarian at the Park School of Baltimore, has just joined the elite ranks of 88 authors who have been honored by the American Library Association for creating the most a distinguished American children’s book of the year.
“It’s wonderful. I can’t believe it,” she said. “I’ve been writing forever.”
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village (Candlewick Press, 2007), a tour de force of 22 playlets in verse and prose depicting the life and times of medieval children, was in production for quite a while. Students at Park have been performing many of these monologues since 1996, when Schlitz wrote them with the help of a school grant. The book—now on the medal winners’ list with such timeless masterpieces as Sarah, Plain and Tall; Bridge to Terabithia; Dicey’s Song; and Sounder—was accepted by Candlewick in 2000. Various publishing issues, including changes in illustrators, kept it off the market until 2007.
But excellence sometimes needs to simmer and stew before it can be devoured by hungry readers. And excellence abounds in this savory mix of monologues and dialogues designed for fifth graders at Park, where the annual tuition is in the five-figure range and most of the children who attend come from comfortable circumstances.
The title is taken from the opening lines of Giles the Beggar’s monologue “Good masters, sweet ladies! I am Giles the beggar, the best of my trade!” Giles and his father fleece villagers they meet in their travels, selling “holy” water and “relics” to the gullible. Reflecting the rather adult, Dickensian sensibility that permeates the book, the two tricksters wind up a day of profitable work on the road with a little prayer to the Almighty: “Send us more fools for our food and our keep. Forgive us our trespasses, pardon our lies; look after your foxes as well as your sheep.” The other tales have equally mature themes: prejudice, loneliness, guilt, remorse, resentment—with some freedom and good fortune thrown in to keep the mix lively and hopeful.
Schlitz does not believe in patronizing youngsters. As a librarian who weekly interacts with more than a score of classes of K-12 children, she knows they are very in tune with reality. And despite the socioeconomics of their situations, her charges respect stories about life—really the story of “the struggle to survive,” she said. “They know people die, and live in poverty. They hear about people with cancer, and they have real nightmares.”
One means of communicating real-life themes is through folklore, a medium Schlitz relishes. In fact, one her latest books is The Bearskinner: A Tale of the Brothers Grimm (Candlewick, 2007). She retells the story of a soldier who makes a decidedly unsavory wager with the devil and must wear the skin of a bear for seven years or face eternal damnation. Another of her recent books is A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: A Melodrama (Candlewick, 2006). Though not based in folklore, it uses archetypal characters and situations that permeate folk—villains, heroines, secrets, suspense, surprises, and twists of plot—to tell the story of an orphan who is adopted for nefarious purposes by fraudulent psychics.
In Schlitz’s case, the plot of her life story is taking a twist for the better—four books published in about a year’s time. The Hero Schliemann: The Dreamer Who Dug Up Troy (Candlewick, 2006) was actually the first of the four. Respecting her youthful audience’s capacity for critical thinking, Schlitz sketches the biography of Heinrich Schliemann, a 19th-century gentleman rogue who searched for the ancient ruins of Troy. His quest seems to be more to search for glory and fame than to contribute to sound scholarship.
Currently, she is working on “something for younger children” to be published next year or the year after. The subject matter is a secret, but she did say she has been reading a lot of natural history in preparation.
Education: Bachelor of Arts in Aesthetics, Goucher College (designed own major with philosophy, literature, theater, music, art history, dance, and psychology courses)
Employed: Park School since 1991
Pastimes: Besides reading and writing, she likes to make marionettes and origami animals, bake bread, quilt, garden, and play the folk harp (badly, she says)
Favorite children’s authors: Eva Ibbotson, Kate DiCamillo, Philip Pullman, Monica Furlong, Lois Lowry
Favorite adult authors: Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, the Brontës, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell
When wishes become Newberys: Laura Amy Schlitz wants to use some “Newbery gold” to buy a golden retriever!
Laura Amy Schlitz’s secret is out.
The tales she recounts in Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village not only enthrall adult and children’s book critics but also those who really count—her students.
“Amazing,” said Alia Satterfield, 11, a fifth grader at The Park School, where she lingered on a dreary winter afternoon after librarian—and 2008 Newbery Medal winner—Schlitz had just finished telling a Mongolian folk tale during the class’s regular library visit.
“Awesome!” agreed Kyle Tildon, also 11.
Both students have absorbed into the very fiber of their being the character whose tale they will soon share with family and friends.
Alia is Nelly the Sniggler, who managed to hold on to the sides of a bucket when her father tried to drown her as a newborn, and because her mother cried, her “father’s heart went soft” and she was spared. In medieval parlance, a sniggler catches eels for a living—not very glamorous, but profitable.
Kyle chose Giles the Beggar, a veritable artist in fraud, which he perpetrates with his father as they travel from village to village.
Why does he like the monologue so much? “It was closest to my heart,” he said. “I love theater. And it sounds cool. You learn what you’re saying and say it from your heart.”
Alia likes the freedom in the structure of Schlitz’s tales. “We bring our own personalities and different circumstances to the characters,” she said. “That’s what makes them interesting and fun to do.”
Both are students in Jennifer Lee’s fifth-grade class, and the unit of study is the Middle Ages. In various classes at Park over the years, students have built catapults and castles, experimented with medieval cuisine, and illuminated manuscripts. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! was born from the notion that acting is active, participatory, and fun. Because its vignettes are monologues (there are actually two very creative dialogues as well), “every child could be a star,” Schlitz said in the foreword to her book.
The students do the memorization work at home and rehearse in class. Each picks the character he or she wants to be, and sometimes there are two or more of a single popular character. In the library that day there were two Giles the Beggars, and they actually performed the entire monologue in unison.
Having just come from rehearsal, all of the students were bursting with bardic joie de vivre. They didn’t have to be coaxed to perform; they threw themselves into character with the ease of old-time vaudevillians, even collapsing on the floor and flailing about as necessary.
Each class takes a different tack in presenting the monologues. Some recite during class, some record the performances so they can be accessible to family members who can’t make the trip to school, and some hold a celebration. One class planned a potluck dinner in the school cafeteria where family and friends could watch them perform. Costumes come from a big box of tunics, odd hats, aprons, and jerkins accumulated over the years. Students wear their own black underattire.
Schlitz, a big fan of historical novels who wrote a yet-to-be published one about a puppet maker, wants children to understand that “history is dramatic.” Though she herself doesn’t radiate “glam” with her angelic silver curls, owl eyes, and unassuming demeanor, there is within her a seething, roiling passion for life, love, and honor that comes alive in her “voices from a medieval village.”
Sweet lady triumphs, wins Newbery gold. (April 2008). Reading Today, 25(5), 30, 31.
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