CRITICAL ARTICLE #2
There was a boy who grew up with books. They were his escape. He first started writing children's books for 15 years, then decided it was time to write an adult fiction novel. The writer is Gregory Maguire and his first novel was based on the Wizard of Oz and the title was Wicked. It was based on the wicked witch of the west and who she really was when she was younger, and what gave her the title of the wicked witch of the west. The novel sold over two million copies and then went on to be a musical, and Gregory Maguire kept on writing great novels one after another.

The reason he became interested in writing is because his parents were very strict and he was never very into sports as a child so he used a lot of his spare time reading and doing arts and crafts. When he was 8 or 9 he started to write and illustrate his own stories and he said that the beginning of his writing career was because of the novel, The Children of the Green Knowe. The reason why he like the Wizard of Oz so much was because his parents did not let him watch much TV as a child but that was the one movie he was able to watch and he and his siblings loved it. His inspiration for the novel was because of a newspaper headline that had Hitler's name in it, and it got him thinking about good and evil and if an individual could be born "bad". He almost wrote a novel about Hitler but then he realized that noone had ever written about the second most evil character almost everyone knows and that is the Wicked Witch of the West.



Scarecrow from Wizard
of Oz



He does at least five revisions because he feels like he is smoothing out his work each time and that makes him feel more confident in his work. Also, Gregory Maguire says that one of his favourite moments in the play Wicked is when Glinda finally gets over her fear of what her friends think and dances with Elphaba at the ball. This is his favourite because the audience can see the "beginning of a friendship--one of the best things in life". His favourite character from the Wizard of Oz is the scarecrow because without him Dorothy most likely would never have made it to Emerald City, and therefore she would have never gotten home. His advice for young writers is to keep a journal, write letters and talk to friends about what you enjoy from libraries or bookstores, and most importantly keep reading.

Fraser, Stephen. "Wicked with words: Gregory Maguire reimagines fairy tale." Writing! Feb.-Mar. 2006: 8+. General OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA141492675&v=2.1&u=ko_k12hs_d21&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w