Huh? Why Newbery, you asked? After all, I’m done. We made our decision and now it is the 2009 Committee’s turn. Well, because I’m now thinking about possible books for this year’s award and my current favorite is absolutely neck-deep in atmosphere.
Now I may be using completely the wrong word, but by atmosphere I’m thinking about books in which the setting is alive and a vibrant part of the story, books in which you just smell, feel, and taste the heat or the wind or something else. Books like Richard Mosher’s Zazoo. It has been years since I read it, but I remember being drawn in by the atmosphere of that life, that home where Zazoo and her grandfather lived. Books like Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series where the place is so weird, so unique, so part of the story.
What brought the term to mind is Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath, a book that I like more and more as I think about it. And the more I think about it and read other reviews, it strikes me that it is the atmospheric writing that elevates it to award contender for me. The story is engrossing, but it is the sense of place the author gives to us, that bayou, ancient and current, that is absolutely central to the book. Swirling, twisting, moving in and out and about, Appelt’s mastery in creating atmosphere is what makes this book to my mind a serious contender.
Are there others you’ve read, old and new, that are similarly vividly atmospheric?
May 8, 2008
The school bus honked and pulled over, startling Laura Schlitz as she was taking a walk in her residential neighborhood here. The bus driver leaned out and called to Ms. Schlitz: “Aren’t you the lady who won that big book award? I recognize you!” It is at such moments that Laura Amy Schlitz, whose book “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village” recently won the 2008 Newbery Medal, the most prestigious prize in children’s literature, realizes that she is not simply a school librarian anymore.
Shy school librarian finds success as author | csmonitor.com
March 13, 2008
The medal-winning book this year, “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!,” succeeds as drama, poetry, history, and as something altogether new and wonderful.
Liz Rosenberg weighs in on our choices at The Boston Globe: It took a village to win a Newbery.
March 9, 2008
Last Friday’s Literary Salon featured my students reading selections from the monologues and dialogues of Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! For a few weeks beforehand I’d read them one or two a day during our morning meeting. Each child selected one, practiced at home, and then read it on Friday. Not only that — I recorded their readings, turned them into audio files, and yesterday the kids put them on their individual blogs as podcasts. Of course, they are not as polished as those of the Park School fifth graders for whom the pieces were originally written, but my students had fun with them and performed them ably. Do have a look, a listen, and comment if you are so inclined. (They are very eager for comments!)
HUGO, the lord’s nephew
TAGGOT, the blacksmith’s daughter
ALICE, the shepherdess
THOMAS, the doctor’s son
MOGG, the villein’s daughter
OTHO, the miller’s son
SIMON, the knight’s son
EDGAR, the falconer’s son
ISOBEL, the lord’s daughter
BARBARY, the mudslinger
JACOB BEN SALOMON, the moneylender’s son and PETRONELLA, the merchant’s daughter
PASK, the runaway
PIERS, the glassblower’s apprentice
MARIOT and MAUD, the glassblower’s daughters
NELLY, the sniggler
Drogo, the tanner’s apprentice
GILES, the beggar
March 5, 2008
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, in spite of not looking like a book one might naturally gravitate to as a kid (or an adult, maybe), turns out to be one of the more interesting Newbery Medal choices of the decade (admittedly, not that sexy a decade for Newberys). It’s also the first time since 1989 that a non-novel has taken the medal (it was Paul Fleischman’s Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices in ‘89). And it seems like Good Masters! will be a “lasting contribution that fills a void”–something so silly-sounding I need to put it in quotation marks to palate it, but something true. It’s possible kids will even get into it (if only for the maggoty cheese).
Read the whole review at: poesy galore: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!
February 3, 2008
Ask author Laura Amy Schlitz what it feels like to win the Newbery Medal, and you’ll get a succinct but emotion-laden answer.”I’m drunk with joy,” Schlitz said gleefully in a recent telephone interview from her home near Baltimore.
From Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “Children’s Corner: Author celebrates surprise book award.”
January 29, 2008
The winner of the 2008 John Newbery Award went to Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz and illustrated by Robert Byrd. Again, to say I was surprised is an understatement. I had read this book a while ago, enjoying its unique format: theatrical monologues interspersed with factual information about the Middle Ages. I remember thinking that it was a real gift for teachers, helping fill a real gap in the literature for children. The author, a school librarian clearly has in-depth understanding of her subject and her audience. There is nothing like this on my shelves. A few prescient bloggers proclaimed its excellence, but most writers asserted that a book this extraordinary could never win. Once more, the committee showed them!
From Lisa von Drasek’s (librarian extraordinaire at the Bank Street School for Children) Barnes & Noble Review article, “Children’s Books: The Envelope Please!“
January 24, 2008
Laura Amy Schlitz readily admits that, as a child, “I loved to pretend I was somebody else and I loved to perform.” Her sense of drama eventually led her to create Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, a series of monologues that were honored last week with the 2008 Newbery Medal as the year’s best children’s book. Read the rest at Child’s play — baltimoresun.com
January 20, 2008
Lord Randolph Churchill once summarized the career of Benjamin Disraeli in one line: “Failure, failure, failure, partial success, renewed failure, ultimate and complete victory.” The parallel is not exact and might sound a little cruel, but it nicely encapsulates the career, so far, of the fabulously talented children’s book author Laura Amy Schlitz, who this past week won the 2008 Newbery Medal for most distinguished contribution to children’s literature. Read more at A Late-Blooming Talent in Full Flower - WSJ.com
January 20, 2008
