Featured Authors or Illustrators are selected each month and archived here. Check back often to find more suggestions for great reading.
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March 2010
Laura Amy Schlitz
Brief Biography
Laura Schlitz is tha Newbery Award-winning author of Good Masters, Sweet Ladies, a professional storyteller, playwright, and librarian at The Park School. The Night Fairy is her fifth book. Her other titles include The Drowned Maiden's Hair, The Bearskinner, and The Hero Schliemann.
The Night Fairy
illustrated by Angela Barrett
Barrett's exquisite illustrations enhance Schlitz's already charming, witty garden adventure of Flory, a dark-skinned wingless fairy with substance and determination. A thoughtfully produced volume, The Night Fairy should become a classic. This world needs more Florys!
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village
illustrated by Robert Byrd
winner of the Newbery Medal
These 19 monologues and 2 short scenes cover the range of medieval society including beggars, nobles, Jews, tradespeople, monks and more. Read silently, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is full of insights into the reality of life in Medieval England in all its glory, filth, and prejudice. When taken to the next level and performed, the performer gains a deeply personal insight into the thoughts and motivations of these 23 children.
A Drowned Maiden's Hair
When the clever and willful orphan, Maud, is adopted by three spiritualist sisters, she thinks she has stepped into a wonderful new world. She soon realizes that she was adopted solely for her ability to play a certain role in the family business. Maud perseveres regardless in hopes of earning worth in the eyes of her adopted family, but the weight of secrets and deception and the meaning of her strange dreams of a drowned child soon force Maud to decide how much acceptance is worth.
The Bearskinner: A Tale of the Brothers Grimm
illustrated by Max Grafe
Schlitz's retelling of a desperate soldier's bargain with the devil and Grafe's haunting illustrations combine to breathe a new and almost palpable life into this lesser known Grimm fairytale.
The Hero Schliemann: The Dreamer Who Dug For Troy
illustrated by Robert Byrd
Heinrich Schliemann lived a life filled with exotic travels, amazing finds (including what he believed to be the lost city of Troy), and more than one shipwreck. From a sickly child to a world-famous archaeologist, Schliemann's life was driven by his perseverance, egoism, creative presentations of reality, willingness to break the law when necessary, and an impressive amount of luck.