The Hero Schliemann

"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.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 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.