Bargain Ebooks: Gregory Maguire Titles

Here are a few bargain ebooks by Gregory Maguire. I wish they were the fairy tale ones, but I know some readers here love Wicked with Bonus Material: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years), which is $1.99 for a limited time, down from $9.99

Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years) is $3.99, down from $7.99, also for a limited time, I imagine.

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy is $1.99. This one fluctuates to lower prices while the others are usually higher, but I thought I would include it while I was here...

Bargain Ebook: The Universe of Oz: Essays on Baum's Series and Its Progeny

The Universe of Oz: Essays on Baum's Series and Its Progeny edited by Kevin K. Durand and Mary K. Leigh  is another bargain ebook currently discounted to $3.99, 89% off the $35.00 paper price. So for all you Wizard of Oz fans, this should be of interest. I own a review copy and have posted about it before. I'll share the description and table of contents again here.

Description from the publisher:

The Wizard of Oz has captured the imagination of the public since publication of L. Frank Baum’s first book of the series in 1900. Oz has shaped the way we read children’s literature, view motion pictures and experience musicals. Oz has captured the scholarly imagination as well. The seventeen essays in this book address numerous questions of the boundaries between literature, film, and stage--and these have become essential to Oz scholarship. Together the essays explore the ways in which Oz tells us much about ourselves, our society, and our journeys.

About the Author
Kevin K. Durand is Math and Physics Professor at the LISA Academy College Preparatory School in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has published broadly in philosophy, religion, and ethics. Mary K. Leigh is a Doctoral Academy Fellow at the University of Arkansas.

Table of Contents:

Preface; or, Scholars Walk the Yellow Brick Road 1

PART ONE: OZ AND LITERARY CRITICISM
1. The Emerald Canon: Where the Yellow Brick Road Forks
(Kevin K. Durand) 11
2. Dorothy and Cinderella: The Case of the Missing Prince and the Despair of the Fairy Tale
(Agnes B. Curry and Josef Velazquez) 24
3. Psychospiritual Wizdom: Dorothy’s Monomyth in The Wizard of Oz
( Jené Gutierrez) 54
4. “Come out, come out, wherever you are”: How Tina Landau’s 1969 Stages a Queer Reading of The Wizard of Oz
(Ronald Zank) 61
5. “Something between higgledy-piggledy and the eternal sphere”: Queering Age/Sex in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl
(Emily A. Mattingly) 77
6. No Place Like the O.Z.: Heroes and Hybridity in Sci-Fi’s Tin Man
(Kristin Noone) 94
7. The Wizard of Oz as a Modernist Work
(Charity Gibson) 107

PART TWO: OZ AND PHILOSOPHY
8. Ask the Clock of the Time Dragon: Oz in the Past and the Future
(Randall Auxier) 121
9. Down the Yellow Brick Road: Good and Evil, Freewill, and Generosity in The Wizard of Oz
(Gail Linsenbard) 136
10. The “Wonderful” Wizard of Oz and Other Lies: A Study of Inauthenticity in Wicked: A New Musical
(Mary K. Leigh) 147
11. Memories Cloaked in Magic: Memory and Identity in Tin Man
(Anne Collins Smith) 158
12. The Wicked Wizard of Oz
(Kevin K. Durand) 172
13. A Feminist Stroll Down the Yellow Brick Road: Dorothy’s Heroine’s Adventure
(Paula Kent) 179

PART THREE: OZ AND SOCIAL CRITIQUE
14. The Wiz: American Culture at Its Best
(Rhonda Williams) 191
15. The Wiz as the Seventies’ Version of The Wizard of Oz: An Analysis
(Claudia A. Beach) 200
16. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Religious Populism and Spiritual Capitalism
(Kevin Tanner) 204
17. The Ethics and Epistemology of Emancipation in Oz
( Jason M. Bell and Jessica Bell) 225

About the Contributors 247
Index 251

Wicked by Gregory Maguire: Preorder Bargain Ebook

  

Wicked with Bonus Material: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire is temporarily offered as a $2.99 preorder in ebook format at this link. There is no cover image yet so I used the paper versions above as well as the current ebook version which is $9.99. This book gets a lot of strong opinions so if you haven't read it, here's a chance to form your own. I'm finally going to see the loosely based musical in October out of curiosity because I am admittedly not an Oz enthusiast.

The Universe of Oz: Essays on Baum's Series and Its Progeny by Kevin K. Durand and Mary K. Leigh

 

The Universe of Oz: Essays on Baum's Series and Its Progeny by Kevin K. Durand and Mary K. Leigh is the other book I received as a review copy from McFarland last week. Yesterday's post on Oz in Perspective by Richard Tuerk had the most reader comments of any post in weeks here on SurLaLune, so there are some Oz fans out there reading, even during the slower summer months. I'm showing two covers on this one because it is also available as an ebook for 42% less than the paper version, see The Universe of Oz: Essays on Baum's Series and Its Progeny.

Description from the publisher:

The Wizard of Oz has captured the imagination of the public since publication of L. Frank Baum’s first book of the series in 1900. Oz has shaped the way we read children’s literature, view motion pictures and experience musicals. Oz has captured the scholarly imagination as well. The seventeen essays in this book address numerous questions of the boundaries between literature, film, and stage--and these have become essential to Oz scholarship. Together the essays explore the ways in which Oz tells us much about ourselves, our society, and our journeys.

About the Author
Kevin K. Durand is Math and Physics Professor at the LISA Academy College Preparatory School in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has published broadly in philosophy, religion, and ethics. Mary K. Leigh is a Doctoral Academy Fellow at the University of Arkansas.

Table of Contents:

Preface; or, Scholars Walk the Yellow Brick Road 1

PART ONE: OZ AND LITERARY CRITICISM
1. The Emerald Canon: Where the Yellow Brick Road Forks
(Kevin K. Durand) 11
2. Dorothy and Cinderella: The Case of the Missing Prince and the Despair of the Fairy Tale
(Agnes B. Curry and Josef Velazquez) 24
3. Psychospiritual Wizdom: Dorothy’s Monomyth in The Wizard of Oz
( Jené Gutierrez) 54
4. “Come out, come out, wherever you are”: How Tina Landau’s 1969 Stages a Queer Reading of The Wizard of Oz
(Ronald Zank) 61
5. “Something between higgledy-piggledy and the eternal sphere”: Queering Age/Sex in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl
(Emily A. Mattingly) 77
6. No Place Like the O.Z.: Heroes and Hybridity in Sci-Fi’s Tin Man
(Kristin Noone) 94
7. The Wizard of Oz as a Modernist Work
(Charity Gibson) 107

PART TWO: OZ AND PHILOSOPHY
8. Ask the Clock of the Time Dragon: Oz in the Past and the Future
(Randall Auxier) 121
9. Down the Yellow Brick Road: Good and Evil, Freewill, and Generosity in The Wizard of Oz
(Gail Linsenbard) 136
10. The “Wonderful” Wizard of Oz and Other Lies: A Study of Inauthenticity in Wicked: A New Musical
(Mary K. Leigh) 147
11. Memories Cloaked in Magic: Memory and Identity in Tin Man
(Anne Collins Smith) 158
12. The Wicked Wizard of Oz
(Kevin K. Durand) 172
13. A Feminist Stroll Down the Yellow Brick Road: Dorothy’s Heroine’s Adventure
(Paula Kent) 179

PART THREE: OZ AND SOCIAL CRITIQUE
14. The Wiz: American Culture at Its Best
(Rhonda Williams) 191
15. The Wiz as the Seventies’ Version of The Wizard of Oz: An Analysis
(Claudia A. Beach) 200
16. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Religious Populism and Spiritual Capitalism
(Kevin Tanner) 204
17. The Ethics and Epistemology of Emancipation in Oz
( Jason M. Bell and Jessica Bell) 225

About the Contributors 247
Index 251

Unlike yesterday's title, this book includes the movies and other materials outside the Baum canon much more extensively for comparisons and discussion.

If you perused the table of contents and know me a little, you can guess I jumped right to "Dorothy and Cinderella: The Case of the Missing Prince and the Despair of the Fairy Tale" by Agnes B. Curry and Josef Velazquez, which no surprise, posits Wizard of Oz as an American fairy tale. It's a rather short article for its scope of two parts, first comparing Wizard to Cinderella and then discussing it along with other modern "fairy tales" including Star Wars, A Wrinkle in Time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spiderman and some others. The Disney versions of Mulan and Little Mermaid are included. The length is too short to more than briefly touch on any of those other titles with any real depth, but it is intriguing and fosters more food for thought. And, yes, I still counterargue as always that Wizard of Oz and those above titles are fantasy novels/movies borrowing from folklore, not traditional fairy tales in the folkloric sense. The Cinderella comparison draws from both the Grimm and Perrault versions as well as some of Bettelheim's interpretation of the tale. Overall the essay makes some interesting points, but I don't find much need to compare Cinderella and Wizard of Oz. I find the comparisons to later fantasy constructions more interesting, such as the creation of a family out of a group of friends.

There's only one specific essay on the 21st century's Oz resurrection: Wicked by Gregory Maguire--"The 'Wonderful' Wizard of Oz and Other Lies: A Study of Inauthenticity in Wicked: A New Musical" by Mary K. Leigh. Discussions of both the book and the musical also appear in two essays by Durand, "The Emerald Canon: Where the Yellow Brick Road Forks" and "The Wicked Wizard of Oz." I know that is the work of most interest to current students due to popular culture as well as the scope for comparison and analysis. Leigh's essay is a fine resource for some discussion of the works.

Overall, the collection of essays is broad in topics and approaches. If the themes of the titles are of interest, the book is of merit for you. I particularly enjoyed the essays on The Wiz because it is so deliciously 70s and I am a child of that era.

Oz in Perspective by Richard Tuerk

I have been traveling this past week and thus the lower number of posts the past few days. When I returned home, I discovered an unexpected package of review books from McFarland Publishers. That is always fun! Some of the books were more pertinent to SurLaLune's usual topics, but I plan to post about all of them in the next few weeks.

Two of the books I received are about Frank L. Baum's Oz series. The first one I am featuring today is Oz in Perspective: Magic and Myth in the L. Frank Baum Books by Richard Tuerk.

This one was also a Finalist for the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies by The Mythopoeic Society.

Book description from the publisher:

When moviegoers accompany Dorothy through the gates of the Emerald City, they may think they have discovered all there is to see of Oz--but as real friends of the Wizard know, more lies behind the curtain. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, on which the 1939 film was based, was only the first of 14 Oz books. Together these works constitute a series rich in allusions to a broad range of literary traditions, including fairy tale, myth, epic, the picaresque novel, and visions of utopia.

Reflecting on L. Frank Baum’s entire series of full-length Oz books, this study introduces readers to the great folklorist who created not only Dorothy and friends, but countless wonderful characters who still await discovery. Close analysis of each book invites readers to search Baum’s fascinating stories for meaning and mythical quality. Progressing chronologically through the canon, the author discusses literary devices and important thematic implications in each book, arguing that Baum wrote for the pleasure of both children and adults, both to provide entertainment and to teach moral lessons. Of particular significance is the argument, sustained over several chapters, that Baum modeled his Oz books on classic mythical patterns, rewriting Oz history in nearly every book to produce a different set of backgrounds and a different conception of utopia for his imaginary kingdom. This variety of backgrounds and archetypes gives Baum’s books a truly universal appeal. Examinations of his non-Oz books and his other Oz works, such as Little Wizard Stories of Oz and The Woggle-Bug Book, illuminate the discussion of the Oz novels.

About the Author
Richard Tuerk is a professor of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Formerly a president of the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), the American Studies Association of Texas and the Southwest Regional Popular Culture Asociation, he has written numerous journal articles on literature.

The table of contents:

Acknowledgments vii
L. Frank Baum’s Fourteen Full-Length Oz Books xi
Preface 1
Introduction 5
1. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
DOROTHY’S TIMELESS ADVENTURE 21
2. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
THE WIZARD HIMSELF 35
3. The Marvelous Land of Oz
TIP’S PROGRESS 45
4. Ozma of Oz
THE FIRST UNDERGROUND JOURNEY 59
5. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
BAUM’S INFERNO 76
6. The Road to Oz
BAUM’S PICARESQUE 91
7. The Emerald City of Oz
GOODBYE TO KANSAS, GOODBYE TO OZ 101
8. The Patchwork Girl of Oz
SAVING UNC NUNKIE 113
9. Tik-Tok of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, Rinkitink in Oz
“EXCITING ADVENTURES,” “UNEXPECTED
DIFFICULTIES,” “MARVELOUS ESCAPES” 121
10. The Lost Princess of Oz
RESCUING PERSEPHONE 137
11. The Tin Woodman of Oz
BAUM’S ODYSSEY 147
12. The Magic of Oz
MAGIC AND POLITICS IN OZ 156
13. Glinda of Oz
BAUM’S TALE OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE 171
14. Boundaries
OZ AS SACRED SPACE 179
15. Baum’s Oz
(DYS)(EU)(U)TOPIA? 191
Conclusion 204
Notes 209
Bibliography 219
Index 227

Despite Oz's continuing popularity--primarily thanks to the movie, of course--there aren't too many books devoted to literary criticism of the series. I have to admit to not being a big Oz fan myself and thus I am not well-versed in the series itself. (I thoroughly blame the movie actually which terrified me when I saw it at too young an age, I think, very young and very terrified of the witch and her flying monkeys. And then the continuing classification of Wizard of Oz as a fairy tale which in my world it isn't--it's a great fantasy novel that drew extensively from folklore, but not a traditional fairy tale despite all of the marketing otherwise.)

That said, Oz is important in the history of fantasy literature and is so very American, too. All of this makes it fascinating on many levels. And Tuerk's analysis of the Oz series is interesting and reminded me of just how much Baum drew on mythology and other sources to inspire his worlds. It also reminded me of the continuity issues of the series which have frustrated me personally over the years when I tried to embrace Oz myself.

And so, if you are interested in the Oz series--or Baum's body of work since some non Oz books are analyzed--this is a great book to bring some critical analysis to the series, especially for the mythological perspectives.

So how many readers here are Oz fans? In the real world, I have rarely met anyone who has read even Wizard of Oz let alone the entire series. Almost everyone knows the movie and nothing else--true for fairy tales, but to a much lesser degree when they are compared.