Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village | Laura Amy Schlitz

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village | Laura Amy Schlitz | Brilliant!

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Good Masters! Swee...

	Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village Laura Amy Schlitz Candlewick Press, 2007 - 96 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

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Charming!

A wonderful book from a wonderful person. This is especially good for lower- and middle-schoolers. Quite usable for in-school performances.

Brilliant!

The reviewers have covered it all, but such a truly great book deserves ongoing praise. How nice to see that this jewel of a book won the Newbery! Standing ovation from this reader.

Truly excellent!

Winner of the 2008 Newberry Medal, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! was actually written to be performed. Laura Amy Schlitz has written here a series of interconnected monologues and dialogues which, taken together, depict the life of kids of all kinds in a medieval village. There's the Falconer's Son, the Blacksmith's Daughter, the runaway villein, the Young Lord, The Pilgrim and The Sniggler, all of whom help complete the picture.

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For some reason I thought it'd be a novel, not a children's book

I didn't really realize it would be a children's book when I placed the item on hold at my library. I just knew that I wanted to read the latest Newberry award winning book. I guess I figured that if it fell into the same category as "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle then it must be good.

I was a little surpised at how thin it was. I was also surprised at how it is not just one coherent story (or even a story in the general prose form).
They are monologue and dialogue plays written by a librarian for the children in her school classes. She wrote them so that each child would have a starring role for three minutes.

They are poetic and easy to read with nice large print. The tone and vocabulary is all medieval - let's face it, I learned a few new words. Large colorful pictures are on every page and even the margins are colored and have text that explain certain words or aspects of the medieval culture/life. A large colorful map is on the first or second page and instead of locations being labeled the specific characters in the story are shown and labeled.

The tempo of the words is good and interesting -- I was particularly impressed with the two monologues done by the sisters talking about the apprentice boy their father has taken and how one of them must marry the apprentice for the apprentice to inherit the shop. The older daughter likes the boy and wouldn't mind marrying him but thinks the boy would want her sister (younger, prettier) instead. The younger sister thinks the boy will want her older sister (so he doesn't have to wait to inherit) but thinks that it's terrible that one of them will have to marry the boy in the end. The dialogues are completely different but manage to come together for a chorus type of refrain.

Another one that does this is the dialogue between the Jewish boy and the Catholic girl. They are able to put aside their differences for a little while and just be children playing together. The dialogue ends with the children saying together "Almost like she's a Jew;" "Almost like he's a Catholic."

The one down spot I can see - if I were the one performing the plays - would be having to play the role of the beggar child or the child of the villein where you obviously are not well-cared for and have to scrimp to survive. Or maybe that's just me being a girl and wanting the character I embody to be noble somehow...

All in all, it was a beautiful book and very easy to read. It took me maybe forty minutes of carefully thumbing through and looking at the pictures to complete it.

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Guided Reading in Places

When a book appears on the same Newberry Award shelf as: The Island of the Blue Dolphins, Julie of the Wolves, Number the Stars, Dear Mr. Henshaw, Sounder and and other classics, one sits up and takes notice because it means the best in children's literature. This recent addition to the honor roll, with its narrative poems, reminiscent of The Canterbury Tales, gives the young reader a real sense of what daily life was like in the Middle Ages.

A few of the monologues deal with complex topics which may require some adult guidance to guarantee comprehension. For example, in the story told by Simon, the Knight's son, the Crusades are mentioned, which are a key to understanding his story. To familiarize the young reader with this intricate historical episode, the book provides a two page summary of the Crusades crammed with many facts and more in the margins. These summaries have been inserted beside the half-dozen monologues dealing with the more difficult topics, but may serve to further confuse the reader with fact overload. Topics like the Christian attitudes toward the Jews, Pilgrimages, the Crusades, and Feudal customs, call for some direct teaching and/or guided research to assure comprehension. In short, they need to be explained to children. The majority of the monologues, however, can be read independently. The stories in this fine piece of historical fiction are the right stuff for engaging reader's theatre.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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