Good masters! Sweet Ladies! : voices from a medieval village

Good masters! Sweet Ladies! : voices from a medieval village / Laura Amy Schlitz; illustrated by Robert Byrd.— Cambridge : Candlewick Press, 2007.

85 p. : col. ill. ; 27 cm.
ISBN: 9780763615789
Original title: Villeins and vermin, simpletons and saints
Bibliography: p. 82-85.

Contents: Hugo, the Lord's nephew -- Taggot, the blacksmith's daughter -- Will, the plowboy -- Alice, the shepherdess -- Thomas, the doctor's son -- Constance, the pilgrim -- Mogg, the villein's daughter -- Otho, the miller's son -- Jack, the half-wit -- Simon, the knight's son -- Edgar, the falconer's son -- Isobel, the Lord's daughter -- Barbary, the mud slinger -- Jacob Ben Salomon, the moneylender's son and Petronella, the merchant's daughter -- Lowdy, the varlet's child -- Pask, the runaway -- Piers, the glassblower's apprentice -- Mariot and Maud, the glassblower's daughters -- Nelly, the sniggler -- Drago, the tanner's apprentice -- Giles, the beggar.

1. Great Britain -- History 13th century -- Drama. 2. Middle Ages--Drama. 3. Monologues.

812.6

A series of monologues and two dialogs introduce the lives of twenty-three children near an English manor in 1255. There are interspersed with short one-page essays on crop rotation, pilgrimage, the Crusades, Jews in medieval society and the legal status of runaways. The plays were written by a school librarian to teach young students about life in the middle ages. They were written so that everyone in the class could be a star “for three minutes at least.”

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! was awarded the John Newbery Medal in 2008 for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children by the Association of Library Services to Children, a division of the American Library Association.