Wicked The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West By: Gregory Maguire
Fiction: 409 pages
Book Count: 66
First, like all stories based off of a children's classic that I have read, this is not a book for children. This is a book, as you probley know, is about Oz (as in the world created by L. Frank Baum). It is the life story of the Wicked Witch of the West. It changes many things about the politics/government/way of life in Oz. Some of the changes in the story could be seen as consistent with the different view point. But some do not reconcile well with each other. One thing that it does go back to the original story with is that the magical shoes are silver and not ruby red. (As you may know they changed it for the 1940's movie as they thought that red shoes would look better on the film, as it was in Technicolor.) Even without a great knowledge, or especially without one, of the Oz books this book would be a great read. It weaves a complex story of how lives interconnect in ways one would never expect. It makes the witch a sympathetic character, without removing or sugar coating over the things that she did. It explains how the witches of the east and west could be sisters. And it has readers group questions at the end.
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