Most Popular Books by Laura Amy Schlitz

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.

Winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction An Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Award Winner Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature “Schlitz has crafted another exquisite literary gem, one told entirely via Joan’s vivid, humorous, and emotionally resonant diary entries.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart and her hope out into her diary — 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 brings her delicious wit and keen eye to early twentieth-century America in a moving yet comedic tour de force, available in paperback.

Clara disappears on her birthday. Exceptionally wealthy and exceptionally lonely, she requested that a puppeteer and his two orphan helpers stage a spellbinding show for her in the vast empty house. But then the curtains close and darkness falls ... The puppeteer, Grisini, kidnaps Clara and uses his sinister powers to imprison her body and mind in the form of a marionette. His two young assistants realise what has happened, and all three children find themselves caught up in a terrible struggle for supernatural eminence between Grisini and a dying witch of extraordinary power. The bewitching and brilliant magical adventure Fire Spell, published in the USA as Splendors and Glooms, was awarded the Newbery Medal Honor and is a New York Times bestseller.

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 archeological “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.

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 Newbery Medalist and a Caldecott Medalist join forces to give an overscheduled princess a day off — and a deliciously wicked crocodile a day on. Princess Cora is sick of boring lessons. She’s sick of running in circles around the dungeon gym. She’s sick, sick, sick of taking three baths a day. And her parents won’t let her have a dog. But when she writes to her fairy godmother for help, she doesn’t expect that help to come in the form of a crocodile—a crocodile who does not behave properly. With perfectly paced dry comedy, children’s book luminaries Laura Amy Schlitz and Brian Floca send Princess Cora on a delightful outdoor adventure — climbing trees! getting dirty! having fun! — while her alter ego wreaks utter havoc inside the castle, obliging one pair of royal helicopter parents to reconsider their ways.

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.

This captivating coming-of-age story is touching, funny, and beautifully layered, with a fairy-tale ending that only Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz could deliver. On a gloomy November night, eleven-year-old Tiphany Stokes saves an old lady from collapsing in the street. An antique doll named Gretel watches them, longing for Tiph to rescue her from life in a shop window. Though none of these three characters realizes it, their worlds are about to change: Gretel will no longer be a precious prisoner. The old lady--is she a witch?--will discover the secret hidden in her long-neglected dollhouse. And Tiph--whose parents rejoice that she is "never any trouble"--will become a thief, a dog walker, an actor, and best of all, a friend.

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).

The Night Fairy

This biography traces the life of Heinrich Schliemann, a man who loved Homer''s epic poems and came to discover the ancient city of Troy.

Come the Spring

La jeune Maud Flynn ne connaît du monde que le sévère orphelinat où elle grandit, privée de toute affection, sous la poigne d''une directrice qui la déteste. Un matin d''automne, les sœurs Hawthorne, deux riches vieilles dames, proposent de l''emmener loin de cette prison, de la chérir, de la gâter et de lui offrir la meilleure éducation. Maud se prend alors à rêver d''une vie nouvelle, au sein d''une véritable famille. Mais un lourd secret pèse sur la maison Hawthorne...

When Clara vanishes after the puppeteer Grisini and two orphaned assistants were at her twelfth birthday party, suspicion of kidnapping chases the trio away from London and soon the two orphans are caught in a trap set by Grisini''s ancient rival, a witch with a deadly inheritance to shed before it is too late.

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.