Wednesday 19 October 2011

CRITICAL ARTICLE #3
This article is a book review written by Michiko Kakutani, and he is stating that Gregory Maguire's book is "deadly dull". The theme that Michiko believes Gregory Maguire is trying to express is that "people who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us". In Wicked, Elphaba was not wicked she was just misunderstood by her family and friends, Glinda was obsesses with money and status, and the Wizard of Oz is the evil one because he instituted murder against minority groups. In this book review, Michiko Kakutani, states that Gregory Maguire did a very good job for coming up with adventures for Elphaba and her friends but with his insistence on politicizing Oz turns a world of fun, spontaneous fantasy into a sad, and uneventful realm. In addition, he says that his awkward and bulky language further weighs his story down along with the fact that Elphaba and her friends spend too much time debating on the nature of good and evil and the difference between sorcery and science. Michiko Kakutani also says that certain passages in the novel makes the reader long to go back to the original Land of Oz that Baum created for audiences nearly a century ago.

Kakutani, Michiko. "Books of the Times-Let's Get This Straight:Glinda Was the Bad One?" New York Times, 24 Oct. 1995. Web. 18 Oct. 2011. <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7DF1738F937A15753C1A963958260&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%20Reviews>.
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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
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CRITICAL ARTICLE #1
In the first article the writer, Beth Backkum, interviews Gregory Maguire and she finds out what his writing process is, how he gets his ideas for novels and why he writes books. In 1990 during the Persian Gulf War Gregory Maguire became interested in "good" and "bad" people and he started to wonder if individuals were born that way. Because of this Gregory Maguire began to become more interested in one of literatures most evil characters, and that character is the Wicked Witch of the West. In the Wizard of Oz the audience knows the wicked witch is evil as soon as they see her. We know that she is evil because of her green skin, her appearance, the music playing in the background, and how she is so different than Glinda the good witch. In Gregory Maguire's book, Wicked, he goes more in depth and gives readers a chance to know about Elphaba's past. In this novel, readers can sympathize with Elphaba and we learn that she was not born evil.

In the article, Gregory Maguire says that writing helps him see things more clearly. The process of writing a story has not changed much for him since grade four, and he creates the basic characters and situations they will have to overcome. He begins by writing in hand instead of on a computer or word processor because he will write slower and really think about what he wants to happen in the story he will be telling. When he is stuck and does not know what to do he turns to things that have given him comfort in the past and one example is the fairytales he knew as a child. With these fairytales he was able to explore and really look at all of the character's roles and give the background characters a chance to share their story and he lets them be known for something different rather than, the evil witch, or the evil stepsister or stepmother. He gives the background characters a story so people will remember them. For him, writing is a daily process in which he digs deeper to get the interesting, out of the ordinary stories he is known for.

Bakkum, Beth. "Gregory Maguire." Writer 3(2007):66. eLibrary. Web. 19 Oct. 2011. http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/elibweb/curriculumca/do/document?set=search&dictionaryClick=&secondaryNav=advance&groupid=1&requestid=lib_canada&resultid=4&edition=&ts=168A6173EDD97DBFBBA897F0B5A3D762_1298607039655&start=1&publicationId=&urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B135547074
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Monday 17 October 2011

SURVEY OF AUTHORS & SECONDARY SOURCES

1) Title: Wicked
    Author: Gregory Maguire


Some members of the Wicked Cast

2) When choosing the novel I was going to read, the title Wicked immediately caught my eye. I knew that there was a play that was based on the novel and I had never seen the play before, therefore I decided to read the book to get to know what the story is about in more detail. I did not know anything about the author but I knew people who have read Wicked and his other books, so I did some research on Gregory Maguire and asked my peers who have read his works. I learned that he is a great writer and he has won many awards for his various books. So far, I have enjoyed this book and Gregory Maguire's writing and the way he switches between the different characters to show the characters different perspectives on events that have happened in the novel.


Gregory Maguire
 3) Gregory Maguire was born in Albany, New York on June 9, 1954. He received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Tufts University. In 1987, he co-founded Children's Literature New England and he is still a co-director. He was a professor and co-director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Childrens Literature in 1979-1985. He has written several books for children and adults, and he has written short stories and non-fiction books. He is currently married to an artist named Andy Newman and they have adopted three children.




Maguire's First
Published Book
4) Gregory Maguire has written many novels for adults and children. Many of his books involve fantasy and sometimes humour, and one single motif which is the loss of a mother, (Maguire lost his mother during childbirth). He also writes about people who are in a crisis or on the edge of it but in the end they overcome whatever problem it was and they become a stronger individual. An example of a childrens novel would be the first one that was published when he was a college juniour and the title was The Lightning Time. That book then turned into a trilogy. He also has written a five novel series called the Wicked Years which have become a very popular series in adults and young adults. Some of his novels are based on fairy tales people have read as children but he writes in someone else's perspective. An example of this is his book called, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister which is a novel based on the original story of Cinderella but it is written in the perpective of one of her ugly stepsisters. Gregory Maguires writing makes people look at the stories they knew so well in a different light, and it makes people think more about the "villians" they knew in old stories. Also, his writing gives some background and answers questions like, why the Wicked Witch of the West melted when water was dumped on her. His genre for the novels are usually fantasy.


King Lear

5) Gregory Maguire's main influence was the old fairytales many children know about princess' and evil stepsisters or stepmothers. He takes the plot of the story and adds more detail and depth, and he also puts the story in a different characters perspective so readers can see what Gregory Maguire thought about those characters who were in the background and never recognized for anything in the original stories. In addition, in his novels there is always a mother who is dead, extremely ill, or she could have left the family for someone else. For example, in Wicked Elphaba's mother died when she was giving birth to her son and this relates to Maguires life because his mother died in childbirth also. Gregory Maguire also said that for one of his books, Son of A Witch, the main character Liir was based on his assumptions on what King Lear from Shakespeare was like in his childhood. In an interview with USATODAY Maguire said that, "I've always wondered what the childhood of Shakespeare's Lear was like" (Minzesheimer).

6) Good vs. Evil
In Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked the main theme is good vs evil. The readers know the original story and they already know that Elphaba will be the Wicked Witch of the West in the future. But, Maguire has given readers a new perspective on Elphaba so even though readers know she's evil we are seeing a new story in her perspective, and personally, I don't imagine her as the Wicked Witch of the West anymore. This is because of the background Gregory Maguire has given the readers on Elphaba and her past.

Religion
Religion is a large part of this novel because in the beginning we find out that Elphaba's father Frex is a priest and he follows unionism. Also, his second daughter and sister to Elphaba, Nessarose, is very religious like her father and follows in his footsteps. In the Land of Oz, the country is divided up and in each 'state' they have a different religion that they believe in and that relates to the real world where there are different religions everywhere. In this book the people all have different views on religion and there are some who are very religious and others who don't care as much as others. In the novel, Nessarose, Elphaba and Galinda argue very often about certain topics on religion because they each have different points of views. Nessarose feels very strongly about her religion while Elphaba does not feel as strongly as her sister and Galinda usually disagrees with her completely.

Map of Oz
Family 

Elphaba and Nessarose

In the novel family is a very important theme because when Elphaba was born the only social interaction she had was with her family. She rarely went to go and play with the other children because her mother was embarrassed of her green skin. When her younger sister Nessarose was born she did not have any arms, so Elphaba had someone she could socialize with who had some sort of physical disorder like herself. In the novel the readers can really see how Elphaba's family develops.


Priscilla Galloway


7) Authors that are similar to Gregory Maguire are Robin McKinley, J.K. Rowling, Jane Yolen, Donna Jo Napoli, and Priscilla Galloway. These authors are similar to Gregory Maguire because they write fantasy novels and they have written novels like Wicked, where they take an original fairytale and put more detail into it and put it in a different characters perspective. These authors retell the classics in a new and interesting way for readers. They have the settings in fantasy places, like Hogwarts, Land of Oz etc.






Critical Articles
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