School Library Journal Review

Gr 3-5-In the vein of Laura Amy Schlitz's Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (Candlewick, 2007), Ashman offers voices of several characters within the castle of a bumbling earl as he decrees that he will hold a tournament and a banquet. What this actually means is that his staff will plan the events and suffer the consequences as they clean up after the visiting nobles. The story is straightforward; what is interesting here are the multiple perspectives in rhyming poems that drive the narrative and the humorous artwork filled with period details. Schindler fills the pages with color, from the illustrations themselves to the illuminated borders and drop-cap letters that echo medieval texts. Ashman's poetry holds together well, only occasionally dropping the meter. Endnotes offer historical facts about the roles of each of the characters, from the steward to the "gong farmer," whose job was to clean the privy. In fact, the gong farmer is the most captivating character in the book: his poem and illustration are laid out length-wise to show the drop from the privy to where the mess eventually ends up. While for a younger audience and not as useful in a classroom context as Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, this book presents more details to expand on the period, and browsers will be enchanted by the illustrations.-Alana Abbott, James Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.