The Canadian Press
Baltimore librarian wins Newbery medal for best children's book

NEW YORK - A Baltimore librarian's classroom project is now part of
publishing history. "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices From a Medieval
Village," first conceived a decade ago by Laura Amy Schlitz, is this
year's winner of the John Newbery Medal for best children's book in the
U.S.

The Randolph Caldecott award for top picture book went to Brian
Selznick's "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," a 500-plus page hybrid of a
graphic novel and traditional illustration about an orphan boy and a
robot in Paris at the turn of the 20th century.

The awards, which honour authors of children's books published in the
United States, were announced by the American Library Association,
currently meeting in Philadelphia.

"Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" began in 1997 at the Park School of
Baltimore, where Schlitz has been working since the early 1990s. Working
with fifth graders on the Middle Ages, she noticed the students were so
enthusiastic, "going at it hammer and tongs," that she saw a chance to
combine education and entertainment.

"I wanted them to have something to perform but no one wanted a small
part," Schlitz, who has written three other children's books, said in a
statement issued Monday by the Park School. "So I decided to write
monologues instead of one long play, so that for three minutes at least,
every child could be a star."

Previous winners of the Newbery, founded in 1922, include such
favourites as Louis Sachar's "Holes" and Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle
in Time." The Caldecott prize, started in 1938, has been given to Chris
Van Allsburg's "The Polar Express" and Robert McCloskey's "Make Way for
Ducklings" among others.