This book was somewhat a disappointment. I'd read "Wicked" years ago and enjoyed it very much. This book, the third in the Wicked Years series, kept putting me to sleep. The story follows the life journey of the Cowardly Lion. It has a slow start, but eventually picked up enough speed to keep me ...
The best of the series! (after Wicked) This book was well worth plodding through Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men. I think Maguire did a great job wrapping up the series with this last book. It was way more concise, witty, and satisfying than the middle two books. He did, however, keep a good ...
Multilayered and rich and humorous and magical. Set in early 20th century Russia, this is the story of peasant Elena and wealthy Ekaterina, and how a trip to see the Tsar's godson and a damaged train track and a Faberge egg cause them to step into each other's lives. Part comedy of errors and p...
3 1/2 stars -This was a bit different from the typical kid's fare. I liked that it was Russian and drew on the Russian folktales. I liked the characters - particularly Baba Yaga and Elena. The writing was very good - Maguire has a real literary flare that is still quite readable for kids, but ...
I love my physical edition of this novel...while the reading experience wasn't as good as always thought that it would be.A thing that I got amazed when I started to "label" this book, in the process of my review, in my virtual shelves of Goodreads was how many different genres the novel touches....
In the years after she attended school at Shiz Univesity, Elphaba Thropp, a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West, whose tragic life and death were chronicled in Wicked, had a lover, Prince Fiyero of the Vinkus, the land lying west of the Emerald City. Fiyero was abducted and murdered by Gale Force ...
Erin GortMs. HousemanH World Lit5 May 2008Gregory MaguireMirror MirrorNew York: Harper Collins, 2004280 pp. $16.00978-0-06-098865-4t The novel “Mirror Mirror” was an immense letdown after reading “Wicked” and “Son of a Witch.” Gregory Maguire is noted for recreating or retelling previously creat...
I got my hands on Gregory Maguire's Lost and knew that I should read it prior to Wicked, only so that I would be able to put my full attention into the series instead of sidestepping it to read Lost. Besides, I figured that this would be a quick, engaging read, especially after I had read Confes...
The premise is that Maguire (he of Wicked fame) took common fairy tales and retold them with twists, and animals at the main characters. For example, Goldilocks becomes “Goldiefox and the three chickens.” Hansel and Gretel becomes “Hamster and Gerbil.” I love it for that premise alone. Oh, but it...
In an orphanage in upstate NY, twelve-year-old Alice lives her life among the stern nuns that share her home. She's not like the rest of the little girls, she can't hear very well, and she has a speech impediment that makes it hard for her to talk. Sister Vincent de Paul befriends Alice and becom...
You may not know Gregory Maguire by name, but you probably know something he wrote: namely, Wicked. Maguire has done a number of books based in the realm of fairy tales mixed with a shot of the dark and not always happy-endings. What-the-Dickens is a book that mixes the stark reality of the moder...
Written and Illustrated by Gregory Maguire TO GERALDINE FEGAN and to the thousands of school and public librarians who work to keep the library lamps burning during dark times PART ONE ON AN ISLAND so far north that it snowed from September to April, a boy named Frederik kept himself warm by keep...
“A little restraint in the theatrics,” said the magistrate. “When I came to,” she continued, less sonorously, “I found myself in the elevator cage half buried in a landslide. When people dug me out I assumed they would be San Franciscans. But just my luck. Imagine: a tribe of little people! Again...
Lookit, Sister,” said the girl. She stretched her hands out on either side of her. “It’s raining out one window and snowing out the other.” “I’ll look in a minute,” said the nun. “After I get this oil off the burner—it’s popping like nobody’s business.” She hustled the skillet onto the chopping b...
She had draped a lacy bureau scarf over her head and attached it with plastic clothespins, and she carried her Bible in a plastic Price Chopper bag. Around her neck hung a homemade lei: strung popcorn interspersed with the occasional pitted black olive. Tabitha guessed this must be an imitation r...
The sound of hastening footsteps in the fog took on sloshy echo. They were running through marsh grass now, wetlands. Their feet were soaked. Perhaps we are at the side of the ocean, thought Ada. “The salt air will do you no good,” she panted to the Tin Ballerina and the Tin Bear. “You will come ...