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48th out of 90 books
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Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village
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 pe...more
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 pe...more
Hardcover, 96 pages
Published
July 24th 2007
by Candlewick Press
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Brandy
rated it
I'll probably get comments from strangers on this, demanding I explain myself.
I don't think this should have gotten the Newbery medal.
I know I've ranted about the Newbery committee in the past, how they pick feel-good books with more emotional growth than plot development. And I know that the Newbery medal is for excellence in writing in children's books, not for engrossing material that kids will eat up with spoons. But they consistently choose books with more adult appeal th...more
I don't think this should have gotten the Newbery medal.
I know I've ranted about the Newbery committee in the past, how they pick feel-good books with more emotional growth than plot development. And I know that the Newbery medal is for excellence in writing in children's books, not for engrossing material that kids will eat up with spoons. But they consistently choose books with more adult appeal th...more
view all 11 comments
Here's the Newbery winner. It's a 4 star book. But what kid is going to WANT to read it?
Don't get me wrong. I'd have read it. But I was heavily into Eleanor of Aquitaine, Robin Hood and medieval history (still am) and lapped up anything I could get on the subject.
Most kids weren't and aren't on my wavelength.
It's a beautifully designed book. It's well researched--her period details are spot on. But I'm not sure about the language--I don't think there are clear differences...more
Don't get me wrong. I'd have read it. But I was heavily into Eleanor of Aquitaine, Robin Hood and medieval history (still am) and lapped up anything I could get on the subject.
Most kids weren't and aren't on my wavelength.
It's a beautifully designed book. It's well researched--her period details are spot on. But I'm not sure about the language--I don't think there are clear differences...more
Krista the Krazy Kataloguer
rated it
Well this certainly deserved the Newbery Medal! Schlitz did a beautiful job of making the individual voices in the monologues and two dialogues sound true. Reading them all gives you a picture of what life was like for various classes of people in medieval times. The dialogues reminded me of Paul Fleischman's Joyful Noise, where sometimes the 2 people spoke together and sometimes they spoke alone. I like the concept of the book (monologues where every actor gets to be the star) and hope she...more
A beautiful and well written book that most children would probably not stick with or much appreciate on their own. It begs to be done on the stage.
It was fairly riveting to a van full of children, ages 9 - 14, as we listened on a long road trip cross country. The competition was DVD movies, Game Boy and IPod. That says something.
My favorite piece was Jacob Ben Salomon - The Moneylender's Son and Petronella - The Merchant's Daughter. It portrayed two children, a Jew an...more
It was fairly riveting to a van full of children, ages 9 - 14, as we listened on a long road trip cross country. The competition was DVD movies, Game Boy and IPod. That says something.
My favorite piece was Jacob Ben Salomon - The Moneylender's Son and Petronella - The Merchant's Daughter. It portrayed two children, a Jew an...more
My favorite children's book of the year (so far).
Seventeen monologues from young people in an English village about 1255. This is about as perfect a volume as could be. It's lovely, it's research is solid, Laura Amy Schlitz writes like an angel, teachers all over the country will be weeping with joy and relief, and librarians will love it. Not only that, I think the kids will, too. Fabulous.
Seventeen monologues from young people in an English village about 1255. This is about as perfect a volume as could be. It's lovely, it's research is solid, Laura Amy Schlitz writes like an angel, teachers all over the country will be weeping with joy and relief, and librarians will love it. Not only that, I think the kids will, too. Fabulous.
It is not often that I find myself truly torn about a book's accolades. I find, however, that this is is true with Schlitz's 2008 Newbery winner, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!
The book has numerous strengths. The art is reminiscent of medieval woodcuttings, and it is their simplicity that gives the collection of soliloquies a folksy, charming touch. It is not just the drawings that give the book its power. Schlitz has a wonderful sense of humor, as evidenced by the particularly amusing ...more
The book has numerous strengths. The art is reminiscent of medieval woodcuttings, and it is their simplicity that gives the collection of soliloquies a folksy, charming touch. It is not just the drawings that give the book its power. Schlitz has a wonderful sense of humor, as evidenced by the particularly amusing ...more
The author of this delightful children's book, Laura Amy Schlitz, is a school librarian. She wrote this 2008 Newbery Award winner for a group of her students who were studying the Middle Ages. Her desire was to provide enough short plays so that each of the 17 children in each class could share equally in the performance and demonstration of this period of history.
And, boy, do the Middle Ages come alive in these plays!
Set in a medieval manor in England in 1255, these unfo...more
And, boy, do the Middle Ages come alive in these plays!
Set in a medieval manor in England in 1255, these unfo...more
Jess
rated it
Recommends it for:
History teachers from K-12 to undergrad, older kids interested in history
As a medieval historian and a mother, I'm constantly searching for books that talk about the middle ages in an accessible yet accurate way. Sure, there are lots of cute books out there about knights, and even some really good non-fiction for older kids (Usborne does it best). But this book completely deserves the Newberry Medal it got. The poetry is beautiful, the stories she tells for each character in the manor whom she profiles is moving, and the details are meticulously correct and add a lev...more
I'll admit the last thing I was expecting was to enjoy this book so much. Everything about it didn't seem to appeal to me. But because of reviews I'd read on the blogs, I decided to give it a chance. Good thing.
Through 19 monologues and 2 dialogues, interspersed with mini-essays on various aspects of medieval life, along with footnotes on most of the pages, we catch a compelling glimpse of what life was like in a small medieval village.
I expected "Good Masters! Swee...more
Through 19 monologues and 2 dialogues, interspersed with mini-essays on various aspects of medieval life, along with footnotes on most of the pages, we catch a compelling glimpse of what life was like in a small medieval village.
I expected "Good Masters! Swee...more
A collection of twenty-two plays depicting what life during the Medieval times might have been like.
I was very excited to read the 2008 Newbery Award winner and while this book did entertain me, I was disappointed with the content and didn't think that it deserved the medal. I liked the poems that you could perform as skits, they were amusing and did a fair job of describing Medieval life. I thought this was a good book, and that is its problem. It is only "good" not "...more
I was very excited to read the 2008 Newbery Award winner and while this book did entertain me, I was disappointed with the content and didn't think that it deserved the medal. I liked the poems that you could perform as skits, they were amusing and did a fair job of describing Medieval life. I thought this was a good book, and that is its problem. It is only "good" not "...more
Reading this engaging little book in November, I was impressed, once again, with the ease of my life and the multitude of my blessings, for which I am ever more thankful.
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a collection of short poems and prose giving voice to 23 young people tied to a medieval manor. Each is a soliloquy, originally intended to be recited as a class presentation about the Middle Ages. From the adventures of Hugo, the lord’s nephew, to the conniving of Giles, the beggar, ...more
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a collection of short poems and prose giving voice to 23 young people tied to a medieval manor. Each is a soliloquy, originally intended to be recited as a class presentation about the Middle Ages. From the adventures of Hugo, the lord’s nephew, to the conniving of Giles, the beggar, ...more
From the moment this lovely book passed into my hands I felt in the presence of a true and gifted writer and educator. I think this book is one of the most accessible non-accessible-on-the-surface books for children I have seen in a long time. It is generous in its appeal, its delivery and its intent. The writing is clear and mystical enough to allow a reader to make that shift from this world to the next (in this case the medieval world)confidently. I have nothing but immense praise for this o...more
Perhaps I was not sufficiently prepared for the poetry when I started reading this. Schlitz went to the trouble of explaining what she was doing and the reason for doing it, but a little more explanation about the style of writing as it related to each character would have been helpful. She went through the trouble of explaining the foreword! Why not the style? I wasn't sure if the "foot"notes (appearing in the margins) were intrusive or helpful. I suppose you could ignore them if ...more
Sara Hannon
added it
1. Junior book, historical fiction
2. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a well-researched collection of monologues from a single medieval village. It details the lives of a range of village occupations, occasionally intermingling, as it gives the reader a sense of what it was like to live in that time period, whether you were a beggar or a monk or the son of a lord.
3. One criticism I have for this book is that it is really not a great book to just read. This book was truly m...more
2. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a well-researched collection of monologues from a single medieval village. It details the lives of a range of village occupations, occasionally intermingling, as it gives the reader a sense of what it was like to live in that time period, whether you were a beggar or a monk or the son of a lord.
3. One criticism I have for this book is that it is really not a great book to just read. This book was truly m...more
I so adored this book! As a teacher, there are so many amazing possibilities! My only wish is that this book were longer!
Or I wish there were more books like this, but on different time periods or different cultures :)
I can definitely see why this book won the Newbery. Here’s a few of many reasons:
One of the big themes in this book was empathy. Each monologue allowed you to understand and share the feelings of a medieval child. Upon finishing this book, readers wil...more
Or I wish there were more books like this, but on different time periods or different cultures :)
I can definitely see why this book won the Newbery. Here’s a few of many reasons:
One of the big themes in this book was empathy. Each monologue allowed you to understand and share the feelings of a medieval child. Upon finishing this book, readers wil...more
This book would be an excellent book to use in a history or social studies class, as well as a theater or English class. The author recommends how this book could supplement a study of medieval times:
"I wrote these plays for a group of students at the Park school where I work as a librarian. They were studying the Middle Ages, and they were going at it hammer and tongs. They were experimenting with catapults and building miniature castles, baking bread and tending herbs, composin...more
"I wrote these plays for a group of students at the Park school where I work as a librarian. They were studying the Middle Ages, and they were going at it hammer and tongs. They were experimenting with catapults and building miniature castles, baking bread and tending herbs, composin...more
This was pretty incredible. Technically a play (mostly a series of dramatic monologues), but reads like poetry. The writing is spare but evocative, and the pictures are great--they're not really medieval in style, but somehow they capture the time really well. The colors chosen--browns, certain shades of blue and red--are definitely reminiscent of medieval paintings I've seen.
Even though the book is aimed at children, Schlitz doesn't spare readers any of the horrifying details of me...more
Even though the book is aimed at children, Schlitz doesn't spare readers any of the horrifying details of me...more
I had mixed expectations on this one. On one hand, it one the Newbery Medal. On the other hand, I had absolutely no interest in reading it and nor did anyone else I've spoken to. In the end, I'm surprised that it won an award, as it's really not that spectacular but I was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of some aspects on the book. On the positive side, I loved the format with the footnotes and the informational pieces interspersed within the monologues. The colored patterned bars ...more
Heads up to all of you who love Medieval Times. This book won the Newbery Award for 2007 and I think like many others, I was slow to read it because it didn’t “look like” a Newbery Award winner.
What a mistake. This book is so good! And it only takes about an hour to read! It was developed by a librarian for students studying the middle ages. It is a series of monologues about kids living at that time. The sidebars and inserted pages give historical details about what the children a...more
What a mistake. This book is so good! And it only takes about an hour to read! It was developed by a librarian for students studying the middle ages. It is a series of monologues about kids living at that time. The sidebars and inserted pages give historical details about what the children a...more
Shel Julian Kessel
added it
Schlitz, L.A. (2007). Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.
9780763615789
I have a bias here. When this award was named the Newbery winner of
2007, I glanced through it, asked why, and decided I wouldn't bother
buying it.
Flashforward to the present, I as a teacher desperately need an
activity to go with my discussion of the history of children's
literature. And Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (Are...more
9780763615789
I have a bias here. When this award was named the Newbery winner of
2007, I glanced through it, asked why, and decided I wouldn't bother
buying it.
Flashforward to the present, I as a teacher desperately need an
activity to go with my discussion of the history of children's
literature. And Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (Are...more
This book accomplishes the goal it sets out to accomplish. It creates a 17 part play with no leads or star characters; a play where all the characters get equal time. While performing the play one would also learn a little bit about medieval history. Since this is a unique goal and appeals to certain ideas of what a book for children "should" do, the book won a big award. And because I happen to be reading all the Newbery award winners in order, I had to read the book. That being said ...more
This was an unusual book in that it is short vignettes of young people during the Middle Ages. A fan of Margaret Frazer's medieval mysteries a lot of the information was familiar to me but what a great way to have kids learn about history. The book is written with the expectation that each part about a particular youth is a monologue that could be done by students in a class...history and public speaking! Winner of the Newbery Award, this is definitely an original!
Not your ordinary book of children's poetry, Laura Amy Schlitz' Newberry winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a collection of verse and prose meant to serve as one-person plays. Each medieval character's story is told convincingly: if one were to doubt the accuracy of the verse itself, the lengthy bibliography leaves the reader feeling sure this is as close a true glimpse into the time period (1255) as possible without moving into a hefty historical tome or out of children's literature.
...more
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Never have I been so immersed in history. Anytime someone visited my house this weekend, I promptly sat them down and read them one of the more devastating shorts. Every one of them said, with white faces, "I wasn't expecting that."
Schlitz has performed a miracle. I learned more about medieval times in the hour I spent reading this book than all my school years combined. To summarize the introduction, it's easy to forget, when speaking of taxes and laws and years and ki...more
Schlitz has performed a miracle. I learned more about medieval times in the hour I spent reading this book than all my school years combined. To summarize the introduction, it's easy to forget, when speaking of taxes and laws and years and ki...more
Lisa Rathbun
added it
A well-written series of short monologues from various young people on a manor in medieval England. As a youngster, I always envied the pageantry and cool clothes of the period, but reading this makes you appreciate our age so much more as you realize the povery and limited choices people at that time had. I could see students in a writing class wanting to flesh out the various stories, although one would have to know a lot about the period in order to be accurate. It's so sad that a society ...more
I have read several people's comments, and I must admit that Good Masters, Sweet Ladies didn't scream Newbery Medal to me either. I liked the book well enough, but it just doesn't stir me to the core like a Newbery winner should. Schlitz deserves major props for creativity and conceiving of a rather brilliant format: accounts presented as monologues and dialogues delivered by a diverse cross-section of characters who live in a medieval village. The problem I encountered was that I just didn'...more
The context in which this book was written is charming enough: a school librarian wrote a series of monologues and dialogues for fifth graders to perform as a play, so that they could all be the stars. In practice, I found it pretty painful to read. It took me several tries, but I finally got through it. Some reviews claim that it is better listened to, or seen as a play, but performances I found on YouTube didn't add to my enjoyment.
It may be that I don't have much of a taste for s...more
It may be that I don't have much of a taste for s...more
1. Genre- Historical Fiction
2. This is a unique book in which the reader is presented with several different medieval characters, from children to knights and the interesting experiences they’ve had. Schilitz’s writing, which takes the form of numerous dialogues, allows the reader to have a real view into differentiated and often hard lives of medieval children.
3. Critique-
a. I believe the dialogue and word choice used by the author truly make this book great.
b. By...more
2008 Newbery Medal Winner
A series of monologues in prose and various kinds of verse both rhyming and not that represent the voices of different young people living on the lands of a lord in medieval times. Throughout, the historical details are interesting and draw the reader in.
I really enjoyed some of the monologues and I started out thinking I would give the book four stars, but there was just something off about the way that the author treated Christianity over the c...more
A series of monologues in prose and various kinds of verse both rhyming and not that represent the voices of different young people living on the lands of a lord in medieval times. Throughout, the historical details are interesting and draw the reader in.
I really enjoyed some of the monologues and I started out thinking I would give the book four stars, but there was just something off about the way that the author treated Christianity over the c...more
I love, love, LOVED this book--both the writing and the illustrations resonated with me. Schlitz deservedly won the 2008 Newbery (yes, I DID spell Newbery correctly. Only one "r"!) medal for this beautiful piece of literature. An honest and informative picture of medieval life emerges from the monologues and dialogues of the characters who live in this village. Schlitz does what every historical fiction writer SHOULD do: she makes dry-as-dust history come alive through the eyes of the ...more
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| The Folded Corner: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, by Laura Amy Schlitz | 2 | 2 | Feb 07, 2012 07:11pm |
Laura Amy Schlitz has spent most of her life as a librarian and professional storyteller. She is currently a librarian at the Park School in Baltimore, where she has worked since 1991. She is a winner of the 2008 John Newbery award for her book Good Masters, Sweet Ladies!
Ms. Schlitz lives in the Loch Hill section of Baltimore County. She is single with no children.
She has ...more
More about Laura Amy Schlitz...
Ms. Schlitz lives in the Loch Hill section of Baltimore County. She is single with no children.
She has ...more
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