Laura Amy Schlitz

The Newbery Medal-winning author of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village presents a gothic and darkly comic thriller set in Victorian England.

Splendors and Glooms

The Newbery Medal-winning author of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! gives readers a virtuoso performance in verse in this profoundly original epic pitched just right for fans of poetry, history, mythology, and fantasy. Welcome to ancient Greece as only genius storyteller Laura Amy Schlitz can conjure it. In a warlike land of wind and sunlight, "ringed by a restless sea," live Rhaskos and Melisto, spiritual twins with little in common beyond the violent and mysterious forces that dictate their lives. A Thracian slave in a Greek household, Rhaskos is as common as clay, a stable boy worth less than a donkey, much less a horse. Wrenched from his mother at a tender age, he nurtures in secret, aided by Socrates, his passions for art and philosophy. Melisto is a spoiled aristocrat, a girl as precious as amber but willful and wild. She'll marry and be tamed--the curse of all highborn girls--but risk her life for a season first to serve Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Bound by destiny, Melisto and Rhaskos--Amber and Clay--never meet in the flesh. By the time they do, one of them is a ghost. But the thin line between life and death is just one boundary their unlikely friendship crosses. It takes an army of snarky gods and fearsome goddesses, slaves and masters, mothers and philosophers to help shape their story into a gorgeously distilled, symphonic tour de force. Blending verse, prose, and illustrated archaeological "artifacts," this is a tale that vividly transcends time, an indelible reminder of the power of language to illuminate the over- and underworlds of human history.

Amber and Clay

At the Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans, eleven-year-old Maud is adopted by three spinster sisters moonlighting as mediums who take her home and reveal to her the role she will play in their seances.

A Melodrama

A Drowned Maiden's Hair

Angela Barrett

When Flory the night fairy's wings are accidentally broken and she cannot fly, she has to learn to do everything differently.

The Night Fairy

A collection of short one-person plays featuring characters, between ten and fifteen years old, who live in or near a thirteenth-century English manor.

Voices from a Medieval Village

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

A humorous coming-of-age story that will appeal to fans of Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty or art on a remote farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself - because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of - a woman with a future. Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz relates Joan's journey from the muck of the chicken coop to the comforts of a society household in Baltimore (Electricity! Carpet sweepers! Sending out the laundry!), taking readers on an exploration of feminism and housework; religion and literature; love and loyalty; cats, hats and bunions.

The Hired Girl

Epic storytelling and filmic adventure combine to stunning effect in this gothic tour de force - an unforgettable modern classic in-the-making about a young girl kidnapped by an evil magician and trapped inside a marionette!

Fire Spell

Princess Cora is bored with her routines of life, so she asks her fairy godmother to help.

Princess Cora and the Crocodile

Da quando ha assistito allo spettacolo del Maestro Burattinaio Grisini, Clara non ha smesso di pensare ai due giovani aiutanti, un ragazzo e una ragazza più o meno della sua età. Per il suo dodicesimo compleanno, pochi giorni dopo, ottiene in regalo che lo spettacolo si svolga da lei. Clara non sa che quell'incontro sarà decisivo per i loro destini che, come i fili delle marionette, si intrecceranno pericolosamente con le trame di una misteriosa strega e dell'ambiguo Grisini intorno a una pietra dal potere malefico... Titolo originale: ''Splendors and Glooms'' (2012).

Incantesimo di fuoco

Robert Byrd

An engaging, illustrated biography of Heinrich Schliemann--a nineteenth-century German romantic who most believe found the ancient city of Troy--reveals him to be a fascinating mixture of archaeologist, mythmaker, and crook.

The Dreamer who Dug for Troy

The Hero Schliemann

A Empregada

Clara und die Magie des Puppenmeisters

Jacob Grimm

Wilhelm Grimm

A retelling of the Grimm fairy tale in which a despondent soldier makes a pact to do the devil's bidding for seven years in return for as much money and property as he could ever want.

A Tale of the Brothers Grimm

The Bearskinner

“A brooding, Dickensian novel with a touch of fantasy and a glimmer of hope. . . . As mysterious and timeless as a fairy tale.” — Booklist (starred review) Laura Amy Schlitz’s Newbery Honor–winning Victorian gothic is a rich banquet of dark comedy, scorching magic, and bewitching storytelling. Clara Wintermute, the only child of a wealthy doctor, invites master puppeteer Grisini to entertain at her birthday party. When Clara vanishes that night, suspicion falls upon the puppeteer and his orphaned assistants. The three children — two penniless waifs and one pampered heiress — have been caught in a trap set by Grisini’s ancient rival, a witch with a deadly inheritance she’s determined to shed before it’s too late.

The Newbery Medal–winning author of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! gives readers a virtuoso performance in verse in this profoundly original epic pitched just right for fans of poetry, history, mythology, and fantasy. Welcome to ancient Greece as only genius storyteller Laura Amy Schlitz can conjure it. In a warlike land of wind and sunlight, “ringed by a restless sea,” live Rhaskos and Melisto, spiritual twins with little in common beyond the violent and mysterious forces that dictate their lives. A Thracian slave in a Greek household, Rhaskos is as common as clay, a stable boy worth less than a donkey, much less a horse. Wrenched from his mother at a tender age, he nurtures in secret, aided by Socrates, his passions for art and philosophy. Melisto is a spoiled aristocrat, a girl as precious as amber but willful and wild. She’ll marry and be tamed—the curse of all highborn girls—but risk her life for a season first to serve Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Bound by destiny, Melisto and Rhaskos—Amber and Clay—never meet in the flesh. By the time they do, one of them is a ghost. But the thin line between life and death is just one boundary their unlikely friendship crosses. It takes an army of snarky gods and fearsome goddesses, slaves and masters, mothers and philosophers to help shape their story into a gorgeously distilled, symphonic tour de force. Blending verse, prose, and illustrated archaeological “artifacts,” this is a tale that vividly transcends time, an indelible reminder of the power of language to illuminate the over- and underworlds of human history.

"Anyone with an interest in archaeology or in liars and braggarts will be drawn in by this slim biography of the hyper-imaginative Schliemann." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review) From Newbery Medal-winning author Laura Amy Schlitz comes an engaging illustrated biography of Heinrich Schliemann, a nineteenth-century archaeologist who most believe did find the ancient city of Troy. This engrossing tale paints a portrait of contradictions — a man at once stingy and lavishly generous, a scholar both shrewd and reckless, a speaker of twenty-two languages and a man with a funny habit of taking liberties with the truth. Laura Amy Schlitz and Robert Byrd open a discussion about how history sometimes comes to be written, and how it sometimes needs to be changed. Back matter includes source notes and a bibliography.

Laura Amy Schlitz

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