the hired girl by laura amy schlitz press kit

8/9/2019 The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz Press Kit

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Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels,

yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty,

or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends?

Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a

new, better life for herself. 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 relates Joan’s journey from the muck of

the chicken coop to the comforts of a society household in Baltimore (Electricity!

Carpet sweepers! Sending out the laundry!), taking readers on an exploration of

feminism and housework; religion and literature; love and loyalty; cats, hats, and

bunions.

In The Hired Girl, Schlitz has reinvented her prose once again to tackle a

totally new genre and time period, creating a charming character who defies

expectations and charts her own destiny.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Candlewick Press announces publicationof major new novel from Newbery Medalist

The Hired Girl, set in early twentieth-century America and brimming

with Schlitz’s sharp wit, is destined to become a modern classic.

On sale Sepember 8, 2015HC: 978-0-7636-7818-0 • Also available as an e-book

$17.99 ($23.99 CAN) • 400 pages · Age 12 and up

MEDIA CONTACT: Tracy Miracle, Publicity and Marketing Campaigns Director617-588-4404 • [email protected]

#thehiredgirl

Laura Amy Schliz


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not fom

Laura Amy Schliz

Writers spend their lives making up stories that never become books. Why

some ideas give rise to books and others don’t is a mystery to us. Somestories burn like flash paper, igniting with a burst of flame and an impressive

whhfff! only to go out. Others conduct themselves like dedicated fans in a

standing-room-only line. They bundle up against the cold and advance doggedly,

step by step, refusing to be dismissed. The Hired Girl was a story that persisted.

It was written on the rebound. Splendors and Glooms was a drawn-out,

maddening, tortuous book. While I was writing it, I swore that I would never

again tackle a book with five main characters or multiple points of view. “If Iever get through this mess,” I promised myself, “I will write about one character

who wants one thing.” And I meant it.

The Christmas after I finished Splendors and Glooms, a much-loved student gave

me a beautiful blank book. It had a tooled leather front, gilt-edged pages, and a

red ribbon to mark the place. I thought to myself, Maybe my next book will be a

diary. . . . After all, with a diary, you have to stick with a single point of view. . . .

Which reminded me that I had two diaries in my house: the diary I kept in1972 and my grandmother’s from 1910 (which was not only enthralling, but far

Author photo by Joe Rubin


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A Diary as Inspiraion

While the story of The Hired Girl is not based on anything that happenedto Schlitz’s grandmother, she did use her grandmother’s diary as a

source for authentic 1911 slang. Schlitz’s grandmother was a fairly well-to-do

young woman, not a hired girl; she had a large and apparently affectionate

family circle. Schlitz found the diary illuminating because of her grandmother’s

safety and freedom (she could go out with friends to a concert and walk home

at 11:00 at night); her dedication to culture (if she saw a concert of classical

music, she pasted the program in her diary as a treasure); and the way she spent

her days (she did a little housework and a lot of embroidery). She also played

baseball, tennis, and basketball — and the young people in her circle were

devoted to kissing games at parties. (Their mothers were always present!) She

seemed to have had abundant leisure time, which she filled mostly with visits to

neighbors and family members, housework, schoolwork, needlework, and sports.

Unlike Joan, who is usually in a tumult about something or other, Schlitz’s

grandmother seemed most worried about her grade in German class and her

inability to get up promptly in the morning.

Diary photos courtesy of Laura Amy Schlitz


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Drawing Inspiraion rom Ar

Theodore Robinson (American, 1852–1896), La Vachère, 1888, Oil on canvas, 86/ x 59/ in 219.4 x 151.54 cm.)

The Baltimore Museum of Art: Given in memory of Joseph Katz by his children, BMA 1966.46

Photo courtesy of Christopher William Purdom

Photo courtesy of the Tameside Museums and Galleries Service: The Astley Cheetham Collection

Part One: Girl with a Cow La Vachère, Theodore Robinson, 1888

Joan says, “Today I will contemplate the view from the kitchen

window and describe the beauties of nature. I guess that’s refined

enough for anybody.”

Part Two: The Spirit of Transportation The Spirit of Transportation, Karl Bitter, 1895

Joan says, “I can’t believe that the artist was

able to make such a fine piece of work about

something as dull as transportation.”

Part Three: The Maidservant The Maidservant, William Arthur Breakspeare, 1831

Joan thinks, “Those little caps aren’t becoming.”

Part Four: The Warrior Goddess of Wisdom The Erythraean Sibyl, engraving from The Picturesque World,

by Leo de Colange, 1878

Joan does not approve: “She’s terribly homely. She has arms

like a butcher and wears a nasty little hat. The only good thingabout her is that people seem to admire her.”


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Part Five: Joan of Arc Joan of Arc, Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879

Joan has thoughts on Joan of Arc’s fashion choices: “I

could see that Joan of Arc wouldn’t have worn a Dutch

collar or a Cheyenne hat.”

Laura Amy Schlitz wrote The Hired Girl in seven parts, each inspired

by a work of art that resonated with the author and that could have

been seen by her heroine, Joan.

Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

Gift of Irwin Davis, 1889 (89.21.1)

Mariana, 1851, Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896), © Tate, London 2015

The Hired Girl cover art The House Maid, William McGregor Paxton, 1910

The cover designer of The Hired Girl says, “Paxton’s painting so

perfectly illustrates the story: here is the main character, Joan,

setting her dusting chores aside as she becomes lost in a book."

Part Six: Mariana in the Moated GrangeMariana, Sir John Everett Millais, 1851

Joan says, “I never had much sympathy for Mariana in the Moated

Grange because the Moated Grange looks very luxurious.”

Part Seven:Girl Reading Girl Reading on a Stone Porch, Winslow Homer, 1872

Joan on what she’s reading: “I read several of the Socratic

dialogues and I liked them, but eventually

I got tired of Socrates winning all the arguments.”

Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.


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Sunday, June the fourth, 1911Today Miss Chandler gave me this beautiful book. I vow that I will never forget

her kindness to me, and I will use this book as she told me to — I will write in it

with truth and refinement.

“I’m so sorry you won’t be coming back to school,” Miss Chandler said to me,and at those words, the floodgates opened, and I wept most bitterly. I’ve been

crying off and on ever since Father told me that from now on I have to stay at

home and won’t get any more education.

Dear Miss Chandler made soft murmurings of pity and offered me her

handkerchief, which was perfectly laundered, with three violets embroidered in

one corner. I never saw a prettier handkerchief. It seemed terrible to cry all over

it, but I did. While I was collecting myself, Miss Chandler spoke to me aboutthe special happiness that comes of doing one’s duty at home, but I didn’t pay

much heed, because when I wiped my eyes, I saw smears on the cloth. I knew

my face was dirty, and I was awful mortified.

And then, all at once, she said something that rang out like a peal of church

bells. “You must remember,” she said, “that dear Charlotte Brontë didn’t have a

superior education. And yet she wrote Jane Eyre. I believe you have a talent for

composition, dear Joan. Indeed, when I would read student essays, I used to putyours at the back of the pile, so that I could look forward to reading them. You

express yourself with vigor and originality, but you must strive for truth and

refinement.”

I stopped crying then because I thought of myself writing a book as good as Jane

Eyre, and being famous, and getting away from Steeple Farm and being so rich

I could go to Europe and see castles along the Rhine, or Notre Dame in Paris,

France.

Excerp rom

Te Hired Girl


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So after Miss Chandler left, I vowed that I will always remember her as an

inspiration, and that I will write in this book in my best handwriting, with

TRUTH and REFINEMENT. Which last I think I lack the worst, because

who could be refined living at Steeple Farm?

Sunday, June the eleventh, 1911Today I thought I might go up to the Presbyterian — mercy, what a word to

spell! — church and return Miss Chandler’s handkerchief. It has been a bad

week for writing because of the sheepshearing and having to stitch up summer

overalls for the men.I washed Miss Chandler’s handkerchief very carefully and pressed it and

wrapped it in brown paper so my hands wouldn’t dirty it. I’m always washing

my hands, but I can’t keep them clean. Sometimes it seems to me that everything

in this house is stuffed to the seams with the dirt that the men track in. Even

though I clean the surfaces of things, underneath is all that filth, aching to get

loose. It sweats out the minute I turn my back. I scrub and sweep the floors, but

the men’s boots keep bringing in the barnyard, day after day, year after year.

Luke is the worst because he never uses the scraper, and when I look at him

fierce, he smiles. He knows I hate to sweep up after him. Father and Matthew

never think about it one way or the other. Mark is my favorite brother because

he wipes his feet sometimes, and when he doesn’t, he looks sorry.

But it isn’t just the men. They bring in the smells from the cowshed and the

pigsty, but I’m the one who has to clean out the chicken house and scrub the

privy. My hands are always dirty from blacking the stove and hauling out the

ashes. They’re as rough as the hands of an old woman.

But this kind of writing is not refined.


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Abou Laura Amy SchlizLauded as a “master of children’s literature” by the New York Times BookReview, Laura Amy Schlitz is the author of the Newbery Medal winner and

New York Times bestseller Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval

Village, illustrated by Robert Byrd; Splendors and Glooms, a Newbery Honor

Book and New York Times bestseller; A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: A Melodrama,

the recipient of the inaugural Cybils Award for middle-grade fiction; The Hero

Schliemann: The Dreamer Who Dug for Troy, illustrated by Robert Byrd; The

Bearskinner, illustrated by Max Grafe; and The Night Fairy, illustrated by

Angela Barrett.

Laura Amy Schlitz has spent most of her life working as a librarian and

professional storyteller. She has also written plays for young people that

have been performed in professional theaters across the country. She lives in

Baltimore, where she is currently lower-school librarian at the Park School.

Praise or Laura Amy Schliz

★ Publishers Weekly ★ Kirkus Reviews

★ Booklist ★School Library Journal

★ Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Winner of the Newbery Medal

A New York Times Bestseller

“Schlitz is a talented storyteller. Her language is

forceful, and learning slips in on the sly.”

— The New York Times Book Review

HC: 978-0-7636-1578-9 • PB: 978-0-7636-4332-4 • 6 x 9 PB: 978-0-7636-5094-0


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Praise or Laura Amy Schliz

“People throw the word ‘classic’ around rather a lot,

but A Drowned Maiden’s Hair genuinely deserves

to become one.” — The Wall Street Journal

★ The Horn Book★ Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

HC: 978-0-7636-2930-4 • PB: 978-0-7636-3812-2 Also available as an e-book

★ Publishers Weekly ★ Kirkus Reviews

★ Booklist ★ School Library Journal

★ Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

★ “Imaginative. . . . Beautifully composed.”— Booklist (starred review)

★

Booklist★School Library Journal


A New York Times Bestseller

A New York Times Book Review

Notable Book of the Year

“Filled with heart-pounding and heart-rending

moments, this delicious, glorious novel is the work

of a master of children’s literature.”

— The New York Times Book Review


An American Library Association

Notable Children’s Book

A Cybils Award Winner

A Newbery Honor Book


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Exensive Markeing &

Publiciy Campaign orTe Hired Girl

National consumer advertising campaign

Trade announcement advertising

National publicity campaign

Deluxe press kit and ARC mailer

Promotional diary

Extensive ARC distribution

Online author’s note

Online discussion guide

Author promotional video

Select author appearances, including

as a featured author at BEA 2015

the hired girl by laura amy schlitz press kit

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