Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
Categories
Children’s, Teenage & Educational

AMBER AND CLAY

Julia Iredale Laura Amy Schlitz

The Newbery Medalwinning author of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! gives readers a virtuoso performance in verse in this profoundly original epic pitched just right for fans of poetry, history, mythology, and fantasy.

Welcome to ancient Greece as only genius storyteller Laura Amy Schlitz can conjure it. In a warlike land of wind and sunlight, "ringed by a restless sea," live Rhaskos and Melisto, spiritual twins with little in common beyond the violent and mysterious forces that dictate their lives. A Thracian slave in a Greek household, Rhaskos is as common as clay, a stable boy worth less than a donkey, much less a horse. Wrenched from his mother at a tender age, he nurtures in secret, aided by Socrates, his passions for art and philosophy. Melisto is a spoiled aristocrat, a girl as precious as amber but willful and wild. She'll marry and be tamed - the curse of all highborn girls - but risk her life for a season first to serve Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Bound by destiny, Melisto and Rhaskos - Amber and Clay - never meet in the flesh. By the time they do, one of them is a ghost. But the thin line between life and death is just one boundary their unlikely friendship crosses. It takes an army of snarky gods and fearsome goddesses, slaves and masters, mothers and philosophers to help shape their story into a gorgeously distilled, symphonic tour de force. Blending verse, prose, and illustrated archaeological "artifacts," this is a tale that vividly transcends time, an indelible reminder of the power of language to illuminate the over- and underworlds of human history. Laura Amy Schlitz is the author of the Newbery Medalwinning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village; the Newbery Honor Book and New York Times bestseller Splendors & Glooms; The Hired Girl, recipient of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award; and several other books for young readers. A teacher as well as a writer, Laura Amy Schlitz lives in Maryland. Julia Iredale is an artist who works as a freelance illustrator for clients around the world. Her work is informed by her love of mythology, dark fantasy, and human psychology, weaving these together to create beautiful, mysterious characters and worlds. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Available products
Book Published 2021-03-09 by Candlewick Press

Comments

AMBER AND CLAY works the best kind of book magic bringing to life gods and ghosts and philosophers. It is a rare treat.

An original, intriguing and beautifully worked-out story which brings the ancient past most vividly to life.

Read it aloud or hand it to a young reader. Whatever you choose to do, find it a home. There really has never been and may never be a book quite like it again. Read more...

If you want to become intimate with some awesome Greek gods - read AMBER & CLAY. If you want to meet some nice children, who are nevertheless very interesting - read AMBER & CLAY. If you want to learn some philosophy the right way, playfully - read this book.

Ambitious and original, this is stuffed with food for thought, often sparkling with wit and appropriate strangeness.

...This splendid novel could easily join a curriculum on ancient Greece, helping to humanize the people and events of the past and inspiring readers to learn even more about this fascinating period in history.

Take a journey through history and time and meet gods, goddesses, philosophers and more in this sweeping story. Read more...

Newbery Medal-winning author Laura Amy Schlitz (Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!) has created a literary feast in this intoxicatingly original tale that takes place in ancient Greece. AMBER & CLAY is part sweeping saga and part epic narrative, with liberal doses of ancient history, drama, mythology and philosophy included. Painstakingly researched, the 500-plus-page volume follows the odyssey of two 5th-century BCE children destined never to meet--in the living world. Read more...

Volcanic in power, virtuosic in form, peerless in nuanced execution, AMBER & CLAY is compulsively readable. I was in thrall to its lyric and threnody at breakfast and at lunch and going up the stairs. The muse chose right in inspiring Laura Amy Schlitz to give us this haunting tale of duty, liberty, art, and friendship.

Combining verse, prose and illustration, the Newbery Medal-winning Schlitz gives us a sui generis novel that hits the sweet spot for history, mythology and fantasy geeks. Set in ancient Greece, it follows Rhaskos, a Thracian slave boy, and Melisto, a spoiled girl from an aristocratic family - spiritual twins who never actually meet in the flesh.

...a pensive, contemporary-feeling narrative that easily propels readers along. Read more...

(a) confident, playful historical novel...

Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes Laura Amy Schlitz, like a lightning bolt from Mount Olympus, to deliver a book that is a nearly perfect nesting doll of brilliantly imagined narratives... I am in love with this lyrical novel; its snarky Greek gods, haunting ghosts, archeological artifacts, and vivid world-building. I swear to the gods, when I was finally able to put this book down it continued to hum and crackle with electricity.

Laura Amy Schlitz has done it again - this time immersing readers in the ancient and mythological Greek world. Richly textured, AMBER AND CLAY intersperses poetry, prose, and artifacts to powerful effect. This is a narrative worthy of the gods!

A rich, complex, deftly crafted tale of friendship, creativity, and being true to oneself. Read more...

...YA readers who fondly recall bygone days curled up with Rick Riordan novels will be a prime audience for Schlitz's opus, particularly if they're up for a literary challenge and linger over the closing notes on how she crafted this immersive experience.

Video from Candlewick Press Editorial Director Liz Bicknell, presenting the book to librarians and teachers and saying: "Some early readers have called this the best middle-grade novel in a generation..." Read more...

Schlitz is such a bold and intelligent writer. It's a beautifully written tale.

extraordinary book...

Laura Amy Schlitz's epic story of ill-fated friends, bound by a magical connection, is elegant, thought-provoking and deeply moving...Emotionally intense and layered, the story unfolds through more than 500 pages, making it a challenging but rewarding read for young people who are ready to immerse themselves in a very foreign world. Read more...

...a rare, precious work of historical fiction that educates as much as it entertains. Highly recommended. Read more...

AMBER & CLAY is a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee People Magazine 20 Best Books to Read This Summer Amazon Best Books of the Year So Far

...Schlitz anchors this astonishing work of historical fiction in Greek tradition: ancient gods and philosophers narrate (Sokrates appears throughout); she makes use of epic verse and literary devices from Greek plays (described in the extensive backmatter); references to Homer are threaded through the text. She offers context for modern readers, elaborating on ancient Greece as a slave society, while Iredale?s black?and?white illustrations offer glimpses of artifacts. Like its two central figures, this luminous creation is far more than the sum of its parts.

"My favorite part of the book was the end. I knew my two main characters would meet at last. I trusted that their meeting would be the heart of the matter, and would draw the story together. But I didn't know what my characters would say. I didn't dare think about it."

Reading Amber and Clay is like passing through a river, into a country that you thought you knew, only to learn that it is both familiar and deeply strange; beautiful and very unsettling. You will find a thrilling archeological mystery, uncovered piece by broken piece. And you will find two difficult children, struggling to find their place in the world - who grow in the most unpredictable ways. Amber and Clay is a masterpiece. Pass through the river, but know this: you can never pass back through the same river. Because even if the river were somehow the same, you won't be.

AMBER & CLAY is an Honor Book at the NCTE Charlotte Huck Award Read more...