A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

"My name is Amy Gumm—and I’m the other girl from Kansas. After a tornado swept through my trailer park, I ended up in Oz. But it wasn’t like the Oz I knew from books and movies. Dorothy had returned, but she was stealing magic from the land. The Wizard was back, too. Even Glinda could no longer be called the Good Witch. and the Wicked Witches who were left? They had joined forces as the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked. They gave me a...

"Maguire's work is melodic, symphonic, and beautiful; it is dejected and biting and brave. How great that people flock to these magical novels."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review

Bestselling author Gregory Maguire's remarkable series, The Wicked Years, comes full circle with this, his fourth and final excursion across a darker, richer, more complex landscape of "the magical land of Oz." Out of Oz brilliantly reimagines L. Frank Baum's

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"My name is Amy Gumm. A tornado left me in a twisted version of Oz, where Good is Wicked, Wicked is Good, and the Wicked Witches clued me in to my true calling: assassin. Dorothy will destroy Oz--and Kansas--unless I kill her first. But I've made mistakes. Because of me the portal between the worlds has been opened. And if I don't find a way to close it? Dorothy will make sure I never go home again. Now I have to: joint the witches, fight for...

Years after turning her husband from beast back to man and becoming his queen, Belle finds out she's finally going to have a child. But before she can announce the wondrous news, she catches him cheating and watches her "happily ever after" go up in flames. Turning to her friends for the strength to land with grace, she realizes she's not the only one at a crossroads: Cinderella, a mother of four drowning in royal duties, is facing her thirtieth birthday...

In this captivating New York Times bestseller, beloved author Gregory Maguire returns to the land of Oz and introduces us to Liir, an adolescent boy last seen hiding in the shadows of the castle after Dorothy did in the Witch. Is he really Elphaba's son? He has her broom and her cape—but what of her powers? In an Oz that, since the Wizard's departure, is under new and dangerous management, can Liir keep his head down long enough to grow up?

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This re-creation of the land of Oz, tells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who wasn't so wicked after all. Past the yellow brick road and into a phantasmagoric world rich with imagination and allegory, Wicked just might change the reputation of one of the most sinister characters in literature.

Return to a darker Oz with Gregory Maguire. In A Lion Among Men, the third volume in Maguire's acclaimed, New York Times bestselling series The Wicked Years, a fuller, more complex Cowardly Lion is brought to life and gets to tell his remarkable tale. It is a story of oppression and fear in a world gone mad with war fever-of Munchkins, Wizards, and Wicked Witches-and especially of a gentle soul and determined survivor who is truly A Lion Among Men....

"Following a confrontation with her reclusive great-grandfather, the one-time Wizard of Oz, Rainary Ko—the granddaughter of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West—has re-upped in a mission to settle a few scores and right a wrong or two. Her memory and her passions reviving, Rain turns her gaze back to her native Oz. Though the Grimmerie, which she had cast into the sea, retains its arcane power over her, the lover she left behind in Oz proves no less...

Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While Richard Nixon's 'I am not a crook' speech drones from the TV, the Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentment, sexual tension, and cultural confusion. With clarity, subtlety, and a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award winning director Ang Lee renders Rick Moody's acclaimed novel of upper-middle-class American malaise as a trenchant, tragic cinematic portrait of lost...