Using the initials L, F, and B, Maguire honored Lyman Frank Baum, the author of 1900s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” He said, “I liked the word (Elphaba) because it carries sonic echoes of words like ‘fabulous,’ ‘elfin,’ or ‘alphabet’ or, one might say, the magic set of letters needed to spell a magic spell. Elphaba’s name was created with thought and intent Maguire’s green-skinned witch, Elphaba, taught us about the ambiguities of evil. Gregory Maguire’s bestselling book-and its spinoff blockbuster musical-helped us see the Wicked Witch of the West in a different light. Twenty-five years ago, “Wicked” exploded into our consciousness. Buy it here.By Jane Keller Gordon, Assistant Editor Gregory Maguire – Author Twenty-five years later the author served me tea in the garden of her home, the setting of her transporting fantasies. Set in a Cambridgeshire manor house surrounded by a flooded river, this gentle novel of a haunting dating from the Great Plague was my first experience of literary atmosphere for its own sake. Eleven-year-old Harriet is bright, edgy, uncompromising, and driven - like nearly everyone else we want to hang out with. I launched my own spy notebook in middle school 55 years later I am still at it, snooping to see how life works. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (1964) The queen of unreliable narrators, an expert in denial, narrates this wrenching - and wrenchingly funny - tale of the mental collapse and recovery of a matron in a prosperous London suburb.
Gardam's novels only get richer with rereading.
The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam (1991) Single phrases can sting with accuracy: "the smog of desire" "democratic and ordinary and tired" "a dead dog bloated as a fraise" "all I want is a room up there / and you in it" "joy seems to be inexorable." Buy it here.
Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara (1964)īefore text messaging was invented, O'Hara reveled in staccato rhythm with immediacy and delight. The gray-tint, cross-hatched drawings evoke George Cruikshank and Samuel Palmer, but the mordancy is vintage Sendak. Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life by Maurice Sendak (1967)Ī Sealyham terrier, Jennie, adventures into the trippy afterlife to find that mortal appetites are eternal after all.
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