Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz

Schlitz, L. A. (2007). Good masters! Sweet ladies!: Voices from a medieval village. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

The Middle Ages come to life in these plays thanks to the author of this much needed children's book, Laura Amy Schlitz, a school librarian. She wrote this for a group of her students who were studying the Middle Ages. She wanted to provide enough short plays so that each of the students in each class could have equal parts in the performance.

Set in a medieval manor in England in 1255, these interconnected stories immediately grab hold of the reader's attention, and they won't let go until the last page! It contains 17 monologues and 2 dialogues, and each one cleverly relates the perspective of medieval children as they live out their lives,according to their social class during the Middle Ages.

Assignment # 4

This book of monologues and a few dialogues starts with a wonderful visual map portraying where each of the 23 characters of “A Medieval Manor in England in 1255” live.   The author created this book out of a need to provide “all” of her students with “starring roles” when she was teaching about the Middle Ages.  Each monologue builds upon the next and you begin to wonder what happens to each character as the stories build.  Many of them are written in verse, which lends to the authenticity of the time period.  The language and drawings are also representative of the period.  The monologues make you feel the characters’ despair, their embarrassment, their fear, their disdain for the opposite sex or others not like them (in a Jew vs. Christian dialogue), etc., so many of the emotions that preteens and teens (the audience of this book) most certainly can relate to.  In addition to the scripts, there are footnotes and sidebars giving “A Little Background” on the topics at hand.  This book will leave your students wanting to know more about this time period and the people of the time through the lives of these masterfully crafted scripts of these fictional characters.

Biography of Laura Amy Schlitz:  https://csufyabookreviews.com/2013/04/12/a-biography-of-laura-amy-schlitz/

Literature Unit: http://edhelper.com/books/Good_Masters_Sweet_Ladies__Voices_from_a_Medieval.htm

Lesson Plans:  http://commoncoresuccess.eleducation.org/curriculum/ela/grade-6/module-2b/unit-2/lesson-1

Activities from the Publisher:  http://www.candlewick.com/book_files/0763615781.btg.1.pdf