Gaspare Grisini is famous for his incredibly realistic stringed puppets. Clara Wintermute, the child of a wealthy doctor, is utterly spellbound by Grisini’s act. So she invites him to perform at her birthday party. But when Clara – whose life is shadowed by grief, guilt and secrets – vanishes that very night, suspicion falls upon the puppeteer. Battling sorcery and evil, two orphan girls must solve this twisted crime…

Stunning Gothic fantasy – winner of a Newbery Honor
A dark and bewitching tale of crime, intrigue and magic
“As mysterious and timeless as a fairy tale” – Booklist
“Delightful and eerie” – Rebecca Stead

Step back to an English village in 1255, where life plays out in dramatic vignettes illuminating twenty-two unforgettable characters.
Maidens, monks, and millers' sons -- in these pages, readers will meet them all. There's Hugo, the lord's nephew, forced to prove his manhood by hunting a wild boar; sharp-tongued Nelly, who supports her family by selling live eels; and the peasant's daughter, Mogg, who gets a clever lesson in how to save a cow from a greedy landlord. There's also mud-slinging Barbary (and her noble victim); Jack, the compassionate half-wit; Alice, the singing shepherdess; and many more. With a deep appreciation for the period and a grand affection for both characters and audience, Laura Amy Schlitz creates twenty-two riveting portraits and linguistic gems equally suited to silent reading or performance. Illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings by Robert Byrd -- inspired by the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript, an illuminated poem from thirteenth-century Germany -- this witty, historically accurate, and utterly human collection forms an exquisite bridge to the people and places of medieval England.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Step back to an English village in 1255, where life plays out in dramatic vignettes illuminating twenty-two unforgettable characters.
Maidens, monks, and millers' sons -- in these pages, readers will meet them all. There's Hugo, the lord's nephew, forced to prove his manhood by hunting a wild boar; sharp-tongued Nelly, who supports her family by selling live eels; and the peasant's daughter, Mogg, who gets a clever lesson in how to save a cow from a greedy landlord. There's also mud-slinging Barbary (and her noble victim); Jack, the compassionate half-wit; Alice, the singing shepherdess; and many more. With a deep appreciation for the period and a grand affection for both characters and audience, Laura Amy Schlitz creates twenty-two riveting portraits and linguistic gems equally suited to silent reading or performance. Illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings by Robert Byrd -- inspired by the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript, an illuminated poem from thirteenth-century Germany -- this witty, historically accurate, and utterly human collection forms an exquisite bridge to the people and places of medieval England.

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.

Archaeologist? Mythmaker? Crook? This engaging, illustrated biography of Heinrich Schliemann -- a nineteenth-century romantic who most believe did find the ancient city of Troy -- reveals him to be a fascinating mixture of all three.
From the time Heinrich Schliemann was a boy -- or so he said -- he
knew he was destined to dig for lost cities and find buried treasure. And if Schliemann had his way, history books would honor him to this day as one of the greatest archaeologists who ever lived. But a little digging into the life of Schliemann himself reveals that this nineteenth-century self-made man had a funny habit of taking liberties with the truth. Like the famous character of his hero, the poet Homer, Schliemann was a crafty fellow and an inventor of stories, a traveler who had been shipwrecked and stranded and somehow survived. And Heinrich Schliemann was determined to become a legend like Homer -- but in his own time.
Following this larger-than-life character from his poor childhood in Germany to his achievement of wealth as a merchant in Russia, from his first haphazard dig for the city of Ilium to his final years living in a pseudo "Palace of Troy," this engrossing tale paints a portrait of contradictions--
a man at once stingy and lavishly generous, a scholar both shrewd and reckless, a speaker of twenty-two languages and a health fanatic addicted to cold sea baths. Laura Amy Schlitz weaves historical facts among Schliemann's fanciful recollections, while Robert Byrd's illustrations evoke his life and times in wonderful detail. Along the way,
THE HERO SCHLIEMANN gives young readers food for discussion about how history sometimes comes to be written -- and how it sometimes needs to be changed.