Elphie: A wicked Childhood

Let me just start by saying that my love for all things Wizard of Oz runs deep. As a child, I was absolutely terrified of the flying monkeys, but somewhere along the way, I came to love the movie for everything that it is. I was in a production of The Wiz in high school, my bedroom when I was younger is filled with shelves of all things Wizard of Oz, and of course, if there’s a book even remotely close to being about the Wizard of Oz, I’m all over it.

When I read Wicked a couple years ago, it took me a while to get through it. I find that Gregory McGuire’s writing in this series can be a bit challenging to get through…but hello! It’s related to the Wizard of Oz!

I haven’t read the sequels to Wicked yet, but they are on my TBR. But when I saw that this new story was coming out, I pre-ordered it. I ordered the Barnes and Noble Exclusive so it had foil embossing on the cover under the dust jacket, beautiful end papers and sprayed edges to match.

I went in to the story thinking that this was going to be a deep dive into why Elphaba is the way she is. I feel what we actually get out of this story is more of an understanding of her relationship with her family. Sure she was born green and that created some unwanted attention from strangers for her whole life, her sister Nessarose was born with no arms, diverting the attention that she wanted from her parents and her nanny because Nessa couldn’t do things for herself. Maybe these are some underlying reasons as to why she is “wicked”.

While this didn’t end up being what I expected it to be, it was still a good book to read and I did make it through this one much quicker than Wicked.