FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Candlewick Press announces publication

of major new novel from Newbery Medalist

Laura Amy Schlitz

The Hired Girl, set in early twentieth-century America and brimming
with Schlitzs sharp wit, is destined to become a modern classic.
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 ofa
woman with a future.
Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz relates Joans 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.

On sale September 8, 2015

HC: 978-0-7636-7818-0 Also available as an e-book
$17.99 ($23.99 CAN) 400 pages Age 12 and up

#thehiredgirl
MEDIA CONTACT: Tracy Miracle, Publicity and Marketing Campaigns Director
617-588-4404 tracy.miracle@candlewick.com

A note from

Laura Amy Schlitz

riters spend their lives making up stories that never become books. Why
some ideas give rise to books and others dont is a mystery to us. Some
stories 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 I
ever 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 in
1972 and my grandmothers from 1910 (which was not only enthralling, but far
Author photo by Joe Rubin

less embarrassing). I thumbed through them for ideas. It was around this time
that the Park School of Baltimore was gathering information for its centennial
celebration in 2012. I began to learn a little about the community of liberal
German Jews who founded the school.
After some months, a writer friend and I made a bargain. We bound ourselves
to write every day during the forty days of Lent, and we agreed to pray for
each others writing. Like many promises, we only kept half. For some reason,
we almost always forgot to pray. But we wrote faithfully.
What happened next was a surprise, a gift. Maybe it was the prayers we
forgot to pray, but Joans voice came to me with the utmost ease and clarity,
often making me laugh. I liked her. I could scarcely move my writing hand fast
enough to keep pace with her voice. I quickly filled the first diary and had to
hunt down another one. If finding my way through Splendors was like pulling
wet tissues through a coin slot, The Hired Girl unraveled like a ball of yarn,
bouncing in its eagerness, with only a few tangles to be smoothed out. I felt as
if I were wearing the seven-league boots of fairy tales.
In the end, the joke was on me. Id made up my mind that I was going to write
about one character who wanted one thing, but as I wrote, I came to realize
that Joanlike young girls everywherewants everything: real life and true
love, art and literature, education and religion, friendship and freedom, a cat
and a hat. Though Joans pursuit of a bigger life is hampered by her age and sex
and background, she never takes no for an answer. Shes Quixote in petticoats.
I like that, too.

A Diary as Inspiration
W

hile the story of The Hired Girl is not based on anything that happened
to Schlitzs grandmother, she did use her grandmothers diary as a
source for authentic 1911 slang. Schlitzs 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 grandmothers
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 basketballand 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, Schlitzs
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

Drawing Inspiration from Art

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

Joan says, Today I will contemplate the view from the kitchen
window and describe the beauties of nature. I guess thats refined
enough for anybody.
Theodore Robinson (American, 18521896), La Vachre, 1888, Oil on canvas,863/8 x 595/8 in. (219.4 x 151.54 cm.)
The Baltimore Museum of Art: Given in memory of Joseph Katz by his children, BMA 1966.46

Part Two: The Spirit of Transportation

The Spirit of Transportation, Karl Bitter, 1895

Joan says, I cant believe that the artist was

able to make such a fine piece of work about
something as dull as transportation.
Photo courtesy of Christopher William Purdom

Part Three: The Maidservant

The Maidservant, William Arthur Breakspeare, 1831

Joan thinks, Those little caps arent becoming.

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

Part Four: The Warrior Goddess of Wisdom

The Erythraean Sibyl, engraving from The Picturesque World,
by Leo de Colange, 1878

Joan does not approve: Shes terribly homely. She has arms
like a butcher and wears a nasty little hat. The only good thing
about her is that people seem to admire her.

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.

Part Five: Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc, Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879

Joan has thoughts on Joan of Arcs fashion choices: I

could see that Joan of Arc wouldnt have worn a Dutch
collar or a Cheyenne hat.
Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY
Gift of Irwin Davis, 1889 (89.21.1)

Part Six: Mariana in the Moated Grange

Mariana, 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.
Mariana, 1851, Sir John Everett Millais (18291896), Tate, London 2015

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

Joan on what shes reading: I read several of the Socratic

dialogues and I liked them, but eventually
I got tired of Socrates winning all the arguments.

The Hired Girl cover art

The House Maid, William McGregor Paxton, 1910

The cover designer of The Hired Girl says, Paxtons painting so

perfectly illustrates the story: here is the main character, Joan,
setting her dusting chores aside as she becomes lost in a book."
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Excerpt from

The Hired Girl

Sunday, June the fourth, 1911
Today 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 toI will write in it
with truth and refinement.
Im so sorry you wont be coming back to school, Miss Chandler said to me,
and at those words, the floodgates opened, and I wept most bitterly. Ive been
crying off and on ever since Father told me that from now on I have to stay at
home and wont 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 about
the special happiness that comes of doing ones duty at home, but I didnt 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 Bront didnt 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 put
yours 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.

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, 1911

Today I thought I might go up to the Presbyterianmercy, what a word to
spell!church and return Miss Chandlers 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 Chandlers handkerchief very carefully and pressed it and
wrapped it in brown paper so my hands wouldnt dirty it. Im always washing
my hands, but I cant 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 mens 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 doesnt, he looks sorry.
But it isnt just the men. They bring in the smells from the cowshed and the
pigsty, but Im 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. Theyre as rough as the hands of an old woman.
But this kind of writing is not refined.

About Laura

Amy Schlitz

Lauded as a master of childrens literature by the New York Times Book

Review, 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 Maidens 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 for Laura

Amy Schlitz

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
Publishers Weekly Kirkus Reviews
Booklist School Library Journal
Bulletin of the Center for Childrens Books
HC: 978-0-7636-1578-9 PB: 978-0-7636-4332-4 6x9 PB: 978-0-7636-5094-0

Praise for Laura

Amy Schlitz

A Newbery Honor 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 childrens 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

Publishers Weekly Kirkus Reviews

Booklist School Library Journal
Bulletin of the Center for Childrens Books

An American Library Association

Notable Childrens Book

A Cybils Award Winner

Booklist (starred review)

People throw the word classic around rather a lot,

but A Drowned Maidens Hair genuinely deserves
to become one. The Wall Street Journal

Booklist
School Library Journal

The Horn Book

Bulletin of the Center for Childrens Books

HC: 978-0-7636-3674-6 PB: 978-0-7636-5295-1

Also available as an e-book

HC: 978-0-7636-2930-4 PB: 978-0-7636-3812-2

Also available as an e-book

Imaginative. . . . Beautifully composed.

Extensive Marketing &

Publicity Campaign for

The Hired Girl

National consumer advertising campaign

Trade announcement advertising
National publicity campaign
Deluxe press kit and ARC mailer
Promotional diary
Extensive ARC distribution
Online authors note
Online discussion guide
Author promotional video
S
 elect author appearances, including

as a featured author at BEA 2015