The Hero Schliemann: The Dreamer Who Dug for Troy

by Laura Amy Schlitz, Robert Byrd (Illustrator)

Overview

"Anyone with an interest in archaeology or in liars and braggarts will be drawn in by this slim biography of the hyper-imaginative Schliemann." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)

From Newbery Medal-winning author Laura Amy Schlitz comes an engaging illustrated biography of Heinrich Schliemann, a nineteenth-century archaeologist who most believe did find the ancient city 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 man with a funny habit of taking liberties with the truth. Laura Amy Schlitz and Robert Byrd open a discussion about how history sometimes comes to be written, and how it sometimes needs to be changed.
Back matter includes source notes and a bibliography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763665678
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	02/26/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	910L (what's this?)
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Laura Amy Schlitz is the author of the Newbery Medal–winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, the Newbery Honor Book and New York Times bestseller Splendors and Glooms, and several other books for young readers. A teacher as well as a writer, Laura Amy Schlitz lives in Maryland.

Robert Byrd teaches children’s book illustration at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He is the author-illustrator of many books, including Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer; Finn MacCoul and His Fearless Wife; and The Hero and The Minotaur. Robert Byrd lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Laura Amy Schlitz is the author of the Newbery Medal–winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, the Newbery Honor book and New York Times bestseller Splendors&Glooms, and several other books for young readers. A teacher as well as a writer, Laura Amy Schlitz lives in Maryland.

Laura Amy Schlitz says that as a child, she was very lucky. “My parents gave me plenty of time to play and dream. Often, I pretended to be someone else; a ballerina, a horse, a mermaid, a spy. My brother and I ruled over a kingdom of stuffed animals—I was ‘The Great Laurie’, and the national anthem was the ‘Grand March’ from Aida.” She adored fairies and fairy tales. “I gathered bread crusts and hid them under the dining-room table—people in fairy tales were often described as ‘not having a crust to eat,’ and I was determined to save my family from this fate.” She also taught herself to sleep in the flying-leap pose, favored by Peter Pan on the cover of her fairy tale book so that if Peter dropped by when she was asleep, he would know, from her body position, that she was willing to join him in Neverland. “He has yet to turn up, but I still sleep in that position, though I wake with a stiff back.”

Laura Amy has made her living as a librarian, although she took a couple of years off to tour with a children’s theater: “It was a gloriously free and disorganized life, but eventually, I had no money at all.” She still loves the theater, and wrote her first stage play for a friend who needed a last-minute script for Beauty and the Beast. It turned out better than anyone expected, and Laura Amy Schlitz became a playwright whose plays have been produced in professional theaters all over the country. She loves to make things: bread, marionettes, quilts, watercolors, origami animals. She says, “My hands get restless if I can’t make things.” For the past thirteen years, she has worked as a school librarian, about which she says, “I am so grateful that I work with children—they make me laugh, and their energy reminds me to enjoy life.”

About her writing, she notes, “I do a lot of complaining. People often ask why I write, when I hate it so much. I answer that I write because I am under a curse. I keep meaning to give up writing, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I dread sitting down to write, and I have to resort to tricks to get myself to the paper. ‘One half hour, or one page,’ I promise myself, ‘then you can get up and do something you like.’ I go to the bathroom, take the telephone off the hook, fill my fountain pen, get myself a glass of water, and sit down. Once I sit, my rear end has to stay in place until I’ve written. I often say that I write with my rear end—it’s the ballast that holds me steady while I fight for words.”

Read an Excerpt

When Heinrich began digging at Hissarlik, he had very little idea what he was doing. He knew that he wanted to dig into the mound and find a city of the Bronze Age, but he didn't know what a Bronze Age city would look like. His guide was Homer — he was looking for artifacts and architecture that matched the descriptions in Homer's poetry. This was not a scientific approach.

The thrust of his plan was to dig — deep. At the top of the mound, he expected to find a Roman city, then a Greek city underneath, then a Greek city from the time of Homer, and, just below that, the walled city of The Iliad. Instead of carefully sifting through the mound, layer by layer, he decided to dig out vast trenches — rather as if he were removing slices from a cake. Since Homer's Troy was ancient, Heinrich expected to find it near the bottom.

And so he dug, violently and impatiently. Frank Calvert advised him to proceed with care, to sift through what he was throwing away, but Heinrich was not a cautious man. He whacked away at the mound as if it were a piñata.

Modern archaeologists do not dig like this. They remove the earth gently and keep detailed records of what they find. If they find an artifact that isn't what they're hoping to find, they don't discard the artifact: they change their ideas. Instead of looking for something, they look carefully at whatever comes to light. Heinrich, of course, was looking for Homer's Troy. "Troy . . . was sacked twice," modern archaeologists remark, "once by the Greeks and once by Heinrich Schliemann."

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THE HERO SCHLIEMANN: THE DREAMER WHO DUG FOR TROY by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd. Text copyright (c) 2006 by Laura Amy Schlitz. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

Editorial Reviews

Anyone with an interest in archaeology or in liars and braggarts will be drawn in by this slim biography of the hyperimaginative Schliemann.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

A colorful narrative. . . . Byrd’s detailed drawings extend the dramatic story.
—Booklist

Schlitz's chatty text is frank with the reader about the difficulties of parsing fact from Schliemann's fiction, developing her protagonist. . . . Byrd's wry illustrations match the breeziness of the text and add verve to the whole.
—Kirkus Reviews

Well-written. . . . Should give budding archaeologists plenty to discuss.
—Sacramento Bee

Pictures, timelines and maps make this book even more fascinating and fun.
—Washington Post

In Schlitz’s carefully researched, sophisticated, and far more amusing account, Schliemann’s obsessions and his inability to distinguish fact from fiction bring him into focus as the monomaniac he was.
—Natural History

Simply and in an interesting-to-read manner, tells of the obsessive search of a businessman-turned-archaeologist for the ancient city.
—DIG Magazine

In this lively biography, Schlitz seems to regard her subject with equal parts compassion, exasperation and admiration.
—Washington Parent

From the Publisher