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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 • tracy.miracle@candlewick.com
#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
HC: 978-0-7636-3674-6 • PB: 978-0-7636-5295-1 Also available as an e-book
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
HC: 978-0-7636-5380-4 • PB: 978-0-7636-6926-3 Also available as an e-book
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
Recommended