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Summary
Summary
Ever since the untimely death of her mother, 14 year-old Joan Skraggs has been desperately unhappy. Under the thumb of her cruel father and three sullen brothers, Joan lives like a servant on their farm just outside of Lancaster, forever cooking, cleaning, and attending to the many demands of the home. But she has little freedom, and less support from her family for her love of reading and blossoming interest in education. But when her father tells Joan she can't go to school anymore, it sets off a journey that will see her become first a runaway, then a hired girl on $6 a week, and finally her very own young woman. Set in America during the optimistic years before the First World War, and told through a series of journal entries, THE HIRED GIRL is the story of a young girl in search of Real Life and True Love. It takes in feminism and housework; money, religion, and social class; literature and education, romanticism and realism, first love and sexual yearnings, cats, hats, and bunions. And it's a comedy.
Author Notes
Laura Amy Schlitz is the writer of the 2008 Newbery Medal-winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from the Medieval Village and the 2013 Newbery Medal-winning Spendors and Glooms.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Desperate for the education her father denies her on their Pennsylvania farm, 14-year-old Joan runs away to Baltimore in 1911, where a well-to-do Jewish family hires her to help their obstinate, aging housekeeper. Schlitz (Splendors & Glooms) has crafted another exquisite literary gem, one told entirely via Joan's vivid, humorous, and emotionally resonant diary entries over a year and a half. Through Joan's naïve perspective, Schlitz frankly discusses class, religion, women's education, art, literature, and romance. Joan has trouble reconciling her devout Catholic faith with Judaism, mixing up kashrut and even attempting to convert her employers. Yet because Joan is a hard worker, the Rosenbachs are forgiving and good to her, even encouraging her to read from their library. Joan is reminiscent of heroines like Anne Shirley, Jo March, Cassandra Mortmain, and her own favorite character, Jane Eyre (Joan even gives herself a fittingly literary alias, Janet Lovelace). Her overactive imagination, passions, and impulsive disregard for propriety often get Joan into trouble, but these same qualities will endear her to readers everywhere. Ages 12-up. Agent: Stephen Barbara, Inkwell Management. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Schlitzs epistolary novel, set in 1911, follows fourteen-year-old Catholic farmgirl Joan -- thirsty for education and refinement -- as she runs away to Baltimore and is taken on as a hired girl in a wealthy, cultured Jewish household. Joan is bright but impetuous and absurdly romantic (blame Jane Eyre) -- and her coming of age includes many struggles of conscience, mortifying missteps, and painful corrections and revelations. Botchans narration of Joans diary entries is always sympathetic yet gives a clear sense of the teens immaturity, naivete, ignorance of the world, and constantly fluctuating emotions and opinions. Botchans characterizations are mostly subtle (with the exception of that of Mr. Rosenbach, which in the early tracks verges on stereotype); she conveys the books considerable humor and pathos without exaggerating them. An excellent way for teen listeners to experience the winner of the 2015 Scott ODell Award for Historical Fiction. martha v. parravano (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Growing up on a hardscrabble farm, Joan learned to avoid her cruel father, but she adored her mother, who encouraged her to work hard, study her lessons, and earn her own way in the world. In 1911, after Ma's death, 14-year-old Joan clashes with her father and flees to Baltimore. Representing herself as 18, she is taken into the household of a wealthy Jewish family as a hired girl. Joan works hard to please the Rosenbachs and their beloved, aging housekeeper, the testy Malka. Over the next few months, the girl makes her share of mistakes: eavesdropping, meddling, developing crushes on her employers' sons, and even setting her hair on fire (while reading by candlelight). True to her age, she becomes infatuated with two young men and also struggles with religion. Skipping forward a year, the last chapter offers a hopeful ending. Written as a diary, the first-person narrative brings immediacy to Joan's story and intimacy to her confessions and revelations. The distinctive household setting and the many secondary characters are well developed, while Joan comes alive on the page as a vulnerable, good-hearted, and sometimes painfully self-aware character struggling to find her place in the world. A memorable novel from a captivating storyteller. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The award-winning, best-selling Schlitz seems to have the Midas touch. Expect her latest to have a golden shine as well.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
SURROUNDED by a brutish father and brothers and aching for her dead mother, 14-year-old Joan Skraggs runs away from her family's Pennsylvania farm, makes her way to Baltimore, and is rescued from a park bench by a well-dressed young man. She presents herself as Janet Lovelace, age 18, and becomes "the hired girl," a servant to the Rosenbachs - a prosperous Jewish family who own a department store. It's 1911, the tail end of the Gilded Age, and world wars have yet to break out. Janet keeps a diary, and the reader quickly gleans that her notions of life come from three books: "Jane Eyre," "Dombey and Son" and "Ivanhoe." "I plan to go on as bravely as a heroine in a novel," she writes. "In my new life I'm not going to be vulgar. Even though I'm going to be a servant I'm going to cultivate my finer feelings. I will better myself and write with truth and refinement." That diary is "The Hired Girl," a book that effortlessly transcends the conventions of the young adult genre. Organized around encounters with seven artworks, from Michelangelo's "The Erythraean Sibyl" to Winslow Homer's "Girl Reading on a Stone Porch," it is a portrait of the artist as a young maidservant - Janet, the book implies, may one day be an author. But first, she has to scrub floors, beat carpets, iron sheets and wash dishes while keeping kashrut. She's a tough and determined protagonist, but also impulsive, a bit of a meddler and an irrepressible romantic hungry for an education. Laura Amy Schlitz won the Newbery Medal for her atmospheric evocation of the Middle Ages in "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village," and she does have a gift for voices. Janet's voice - thoughtful, impetuous, alternately defiant and vulnerable - is full and throaty. "I read several of the Socratic dialogues and I liked them," Janet says, "but eventually I got tired of Socrates winning all the arguments." And while Schlitz's novel "Splendors and Glooms," a Gothic mystery about puppeteers, was told from multiple perspectives, "The Hired Girl" is all Janet. Fortunately, she's a charming companion. The Rosenbachs are Janet's employers but also her mentors. Mr. Rosenbach converses with her about the origins of anti-Semitism and makes his library available to her. Twelve-year-old Mimi becomes Janet's friend and feeds her girlish impulses, showing her how to pin her hair, wear hats and buy petticoats. David Rosenbach, the wayward artist son, seductively paints Janet as Joan of Arc and takes her to see "La Traviata"; a kindly cad, he pulls her from innocence with a forbidden kiss after which an emotional Janet, believing marriage will follow, writes breathlessly, "I wonder how married men go off to work every morning, when they could stay home and kiss their wives." Life with a Jewish family prompts Janet to explore her own childhood Catholicism by attending classes at a nearby church. She fluctuates in her understanding. Fearlessly she confronts a priest's anti-Semitism, but she mistakenly thinks she can make a convert of the Rosenbachs' young grandson and nearly loses her job. She questions the existence of God, then in an epiphany writes, "The closest thing I can say is that the absence of God, at that moment, was the presence of God." IN MANY WAYS, "The Hired Girl" is a classic bildungsroman that dances heavily in the sunshine of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre," about another young girl who seeks to escape a difficult life and better herself, and unwittingly falls in love with her mentor. But Janet also shares kinship with other literary heroines - strong, boyish Jo March, who loves literature; courageous Joan of Arc, the 15th-century French saint Janet poses as for David. "The Hired Girl" is a homage to classics that could have been young adult novels before the category existed. Refreshingly, it assumes the reader, whatever her age, can handle complex relationships and inner turmoil. The beauty of this novel is that it dares to go beyond the school-is-cruel and paranormal-dystopian-romance conventions and lets its adolescent heroine think on the page about what makes a human being whole: art, love, faith, education, family, friendship. "My books promised me that life wasn't just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things," Janet says. So does this one. LENORA TODARO has written about books for The Times, Bookforum, Salon and The Village Voice.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs is forced to quit school, much to her dismay, in order to help out on Steeple Farms, where her father and three brothers work. Having lost her mother at an early age, Joan finds herself struggling to do all the chores for the men-cooking, cleaning, washing, and any other chore her father assigns her. Joan's only escape from the daily grind and drudgery of cleaning out privies and wringing out laundry is her love of books, which her teacher gave her when she left school. Joan longs for adventure and true love just like the heroine in her favorite book, Jane Eyre. She yearns for a life away from the farm, and because there is no one else to whom she can divulge her feelings, she pours out her heart into her diary. While the novel is told entirely in diary format, Rachel Botchan's excellent reading of Joan's emotions, dreams, and yearnings will keep readers captivated. The story of a young girl searching for and finally discovering a world away from the farm is not a unique one, but Botchan's narration elevates this portrayal of a vibrant, interesting, resourceful young lady who strives to take advantage of what the world has to offer in 1911. VERDICT Highly recommended. ["Coming-of-age drama and deeper questions of faith, belonging, and womanhood are balanced with just the right blend of humor": SLJ 8/15 starred review of the Candlewick book.]-Sheila Acosta, San Antonio © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Joan runs away from home at age 14 to become a hired girl in 1911. Life with her unpleasant father and brothers on their farm in Pennsylvania is rough. Knowing she is not loved, she sees escape when she learns that the going rate for a hired girl in the city is $6 a week. She lands in Baltimore over her head and is rescued by the Rosenbachs. A large young woman, Joan presents herself as Janet, 18, impressing Mrs. Rosenbach with her love of reading, quickly making herself indispensable to the aging housekeeper, and landing a job as a hired girl and "Shabbos goy." Joan is smart, hardworking, and nave, but most of all, she's romantic, thanks in large part to all those novels. The Rosenbachs' flirty son David seems to love her both for her mind andas an aspiring artisther looks. "Tall and robust and wholesome looking. You're like one of Michelangelo's Sibylsa grand, bareheaded creature." Trouble ensues, but a happy ending awaits, with friendship and the awesome glint of an independent life. The diary format allows Joan's romantic tendencies full rein, as well as narrative latitude for a few highly improbable scenarios and wildly silly passion. Tons of period details, especially about clothing, round out a highly satisfying and smart breast-clutcher from this Newbery-winning author. (Historical fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
