Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! : Voices From a Medieval Village
By Laura Amy Schlitz
Illustrated by Robert Byrd
Candlewick, 84 pp., ages 10 and up, $19.99
The Wednesday Wars
By Gary D. Schmidt
Clarion, 272 pp., ages 10-14, $16
Elijah of Buxton
By Christopher Paul Curtis
Scholastic, 341 pp., ages 10-14, $16.99
Feathers
By Jacqueline Woodson
Putnam, 118 pp., ages 11-16, $15.99
The American Library Association recently announced the 2008 Newbery Honor Books at its annual midwinter meeting, an event that causes children's book writers all over America to hold their breath slightly. According to the ALA mandate, the Newbery medal goes simply to "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published in English in the United States during the preceding year." Children are defined as "persons of ages up to and including fourteen, and books for this entire age range are to be considered." This year, all four Newbery books - three Honor Books and the medal-winning "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" - are geared toward readers age 10 and up.
"The Wednesday Wars" is a tart comic novel by Gary D. Schmidt, whose previous "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" won both a Newbery and a Printz Honor. Schmidt has called "The Wednesday Wars" "a comedy about serious things."
It addresses everything from religion to rebellion to Shakespearean literature, courage, family, and the friendship between teachers and students - that hybrid love hovering among the parental, the sublime, and the ridiculous. ("Love and hate in seventh grade are not far apart, let me tell you.") Holling Hoodhood (what a name!), sole Protestant in his class, is left alone with his teacher, the fearsome Mrs. Baker, while the rest of his class goes off to their religious schools on Wednesday afternoons. Schmidt's strongest gift is voice - he captures the tone of his disgruntled middle-schooler, and gives him problems that keep the reader teetering between laughter and anxiety. "The Wednesday Wars" gets off to a slowish start, but gathers speed and energy as it clips along.
Christopher Paul Curtis's "Elijah of Buxton" marks the author's third Newbery Medal honor. He won the Newbery Medal in 2000 with his glorious second novel, "Bud, Not Buddy," while his first, "The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963," won Newbery and Coretta Scott King Honors in 1996.
Young Elijah is born free in a settlement of runaway slaves in Buxton, Canada. He doesn't understand the true meaning of slavery until a series of adventures leads him deeper and deeper into danger. Despite the wonderful setting and premise, "Elijah of Buxton" gets tangled up in its own devices; the plot veers this way and that, and the tone wobbles between cheerful (Curtis's best mode) and darkly horrifying. The result is, artistically speaking, a jumble.
Jacqueline Woodson, author of "Feathers," is yet another previous Newbery honoree. (Are there no new writers worth honoring?) Hers is a delicate, lyrical book, often heartbreaking, about a new boy in school named Jesus who raises the hopes, fears, and rage of his classmates, simply by being white, and himself. Woodson's heroine, Frannie, and her deaf brother, Sean, are irresistible creations. "Feathers" has rough patches and strange plot twists, but it rings of teenage truth.
The medal-winning book this year, "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!," succeeds as drama, poetry, history, and as something altogether new and wonderful. Laura Amy Schlitz, school librarian, wrote it for her students, who wanted a play about the medieval life they were studying. But "there were seventeen children in every class, and no one wanted a small part." So Schlitz did the only sensible, entirely crazy thing - she wrote a miniature play for each child, 19 dramatic monologues, nearly all of them in verse, plus two dialogues for good measure. Each character reflects an element of medieval village life: apprentice, runaway, beggar, etc.
Several of the monologues delicately connect - the lord's nephew comes to the blacksmith's daughter with a limping horse on May Day, the day for romance and merriment. Taggot, the blacksmith's daughter, stays home: "There's no one for me, and I know why. / I'm too big. Father says / his father was a giant of a man - / somehow his size came down to me. / There's something else. I've stared into Round Pool, / and it's hard to tell - / the water's never still - / but I think I'm ugly. Big and ugly / and shy in the bargain."
When Hugo, the lord's nephew, arrives leading his limping horse, the smitten girl reports, "He had brown hair. Not golden / like the knights in story, / and his eyes were dark as rivers. / The glory was his face - / the shape of it - I don't have the words."
This poem has a surprise happy ending. Not all do. The miller's son is a cynical, hard-bitten young man: "My father used to beat me sore - / I've learned that life is grim. / And someday I will have a son - and God help him!" Side notes, in too-tiny italics, offer useful tidbits of information about medieval life, and further illuminate these lively poems. So do Robert Byrd's illustrations, ranging from colorful double spreads to panels and small decorative squares. "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" is fast-paced, heartrending, dramatic, cohesive, delightful - in short, everything one might wish for in a truly "distinguished contribution to American literature for children."
Liz Rosenberg reviews children's books monthly for the Globe.
