GOOD MASTERS! SWEET LADIES! VOICES FROM A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schlitz, Laura Amy. 2007. GOOD MASTERS! SWEET LADIES! VOICES FROM A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE. Ill. by Robert Byrd. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press. ISBN 0763615789.

PLOT SUMMARY
Set in England in 1255, twenty-three different young villagers introduce themselves to readers through monologues and dialogues and give details of their life in medieval times. Schlitz offers this collection of one person plays to be performed by middle school students. These monologues are written in prose, rhyme and a few are written in two voices. Readers learn about farming, pilgrimages, marriages, religion, freedom and the crusades of the Middle Ages.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a Newbery Medal-winning book contains a series of monologues written to be performed by school children and tells of an individual child from the middle ages. The readers learn about people such as Lord of the Manor’s nephew, who risks his life in a boar hunt and Edgar, the falconer’s son who plots to keep his bird from the real owners grasp. Each story is told in first person so the readers can understand the lives of these twenty three young people who lived in Medieval Times. In between monologues, Schlitz offers short factual background on things like “The Crusades”. Footnotes are presented in sidebars and explain various phrases, terms, and factual pieces of medieval customs and history.

Byrd illustrates each monologue with pen and ink drawings. At the beginning of the book, he maps out an English Village known as “Medieval Manor” where every character appears. It shows where these young English boys and girls would have lived on a typical manor during medieval times.

This collection of monologues will be fun for young students to perform. As each person takes on a character, they will start to think what might have happened to these young people.

REVIEW EXCERPTS
Starred review from Booklist: This unusually fine collection of related monologues and dialogues promises to be a rewarding choice for performance or for reading aloud in the classroom.

Starred review from Publishers Weekly: Bolstered by lively asides and unobtrusive notes, and illuminated by Byrd’s (Leonardo, Beautiful Dreamer) stunningly atmospheric watercolors, they bring to life a prototypical English village in 1255.

CONNECTIONS
Have students perform monologues.

Other books by Laura Amy Schlitz:
The Hero Schliemann
A Drowned Maiden’s Hair

More Books about the Middle Ages:
The Middle Ages: A Watts Guide for Children by William Chester Jordan
Knights: Warriors of the Middle Ages by Aileen Weintraub
Outrageous Women of the Middle Ages by Vicki Leon
Story of the Middle Ages by Michael McHugh
The Middle Ages by Sarah McNeill
Children and Games in the Middle Ages by Lynne Elliott
Women and Girls in the Middle Ages by Kay Eastwood