Gregory Maguire Books

While I enjoy Maguire's novels for adults, I unknowingly caused my 9-year-old daughter to become an addict when I bought "Four Stupid Cupids" off of a Valentine's clearance shelf without taking note of the author. As a result, my daughter
has rapaciously consumed everything age appropriate that Maguire has produced. I am very fortunate to have avoided a battle of wills provoked by covetous glances at my copy of "Wicked" with the release of "A Couple of April Fools". My daughter can't put it down!

I read this book many times and loved it.
Ambiguity might confuse some children, as it does their parents, but they may as well get used to it. Rarely is the question of question so captivatingly introduced.

If you are interested in reading many successful authors' thoughts on the power of story and reading, this book is a must. The essays in this collection are inspiring, diverse, and unified in their passion for writing and storytelling. I found myself returning to passages over and over, savoring the passions for children's literature that are similar to my own. A stellar collection of authors are presented including Susan Cooper, Madeleine L'Engle, Maurice Sendak and many more that appear on most required reading lists. (They are listed entirely in the professional reviews above.) This is a great book for librarians, teachers, students, and anyone who loves one or all of the many authors represented.

La verdad no he tenido la oportunidad de leer el libro en español, pero lo he leido en ingles y me entusiasmó saber que ya está disponible la version en español, pues este es un maravilloso libro que merece ser traducido a cuantos idiomas se pueda. Si eres fan de los libros de L F Baum y de la película de MGM, Wicked te encantará, ya que Gregory Maguire toma elementos importantes de los libros originales, elementos clásicos de la película y crea un mundo denso con personajes profundos e interesantes, dando como reslultado un nuevo Oz, que , aunque es el mismo que conocimos de niños, es como redescubrirlo con ojos de adulto.

This edition of Baum's "Marvellous Land of Oz", "Ozma of Oz" and "The Emerald City of OZ" is great for those reader's only familiar with Baum's first Oz novel. The book is well compiled with the original illustrations by John R. Neill.

The introduction by Gregory Maguire (author of "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West) is informative and it is really interesting to read why and how these three texts interest an author whose biggest selling book is a novel based on these children's books.

This edition also includes a brief biography of Baum, suggestions for further reading and a reading group guide.

This is a marvellous edition!!!

reading is not one of those things kids just enjoy. my daughter loves these tales and even reads them during her down time.

At first I didn't know how to feel about the VERY high level of suspense, and melodrama pushed into every minute detail of this book from the children answering rollcall to some healthcare staff who would be over the top even for General Hospital. However, the style really grew on me and I found the whole story very endearing. I especially admire the way Maguire protrayed the children as high thinking individuals who enjoyed school and participating in life. Too often children are looked down on as one dimensional and too snotty and superior to care about things. My favorite scene in the book was Lois Kennedy the third and her nonchalant responses to Meg Snoople in her town square 'interview'.

For this 9 weeks, I read Seven Spiders Spinning, by Gregory Maguire. The book is so funny! I love it! There are seven books in this series. Gregory Maguire is a great writer.
Seven Spider Spinning is a humorous book. Like I said before this book is really funny! The book of course is a story ; it's not true. It's about seven baby Siberian spiders who got frozen in a big block of ice during the ice age. When the spiders unfroze, they each saw seven girls who they felt in love with. The older the spiders became the more dangerous they became. The seven spiders followed the seven girls everywhere. When the seven girls teacher got bitten by one of these mean spiders she got sick, so sick she could have died...
The books strengths is it's so funny, that most people would want to keep on reading it. The books weaknesses is it is so short. If he made it longer than the story would last longer, and more people will want to read it.
I think the author did a great job of writing this book. He made it funny so more people would want to read his books. Also I would recommend this book to people who likes to read books about spiders, and people who like funny books. I hope people will enjoy this book as muck as I did!

I hated it! I had to stop reading in the middle of book because I was in TOTAL PAIN the story was so stupid. My goodness, is the world running so low on storylines we have to read about some wierd ancient spiders that fall in love with some ditzy humans! Frankly, I didn't care if all the charecters died in the first 50 pages! I wanted to burn the book so no one else would have to wast any precise time even picking it up!!!!!!!!!!!! The ONLY reasons why I would give it 1 star is because NO ONE ELSE would EVER think of that....imaginative of a story and because the author actually did take time to write the story.

I enjoyed reading this book because it was interesting and it was weird in a way because the spiders had fallen in love with humans but in a way the spiders were mad because the humans had killed their siblings.The spiders wanted revenge but didn't want to hurt the humans because they had fallen deeply in love of them. Besides that, the book was good it kept on getting better each time I read it.The book was good and I know why because reading is not my thing and I read the whole book without getting bored.

This story is about two sisters who were seperate at birth .and thy later found each other.enjoyable

The book missing sisters was a very enjoyable book for it dealt with real life situations. i would recommend it to people aged 12-15 years old for some of the language is very difficult. i would rate this book 9 out of 10 because it had a slow start and a kind of unfinished ending. we did it as a class novel and everybody seemed to really enjoy it!

Missing Sisters is a book you'll never want to put down!It's a story that will relate to someone who's been adopted or has lost someone.We read it as a class novel and the majority of the class enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to all girls over the age eleven who enjoy a classical touching tale. By the way don't bother reading this book if you're a boy, because as the title says MISSING SISTERS it's more a feminine story!
By Rebecca and Fiona Ireland)

Missing Sisters is a book you'll never want to put down!It's a story that will relate to someone who's been adopted or has lost someone.We read it as a class novel and the majority of the class enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to all girls over the age eleven who enjoy a classical touching tale. By the way don't bother reading this book if you're a boy, because as the title says MISSING SISTERS it's more a feminine story!
By Rebecca and Fiona Ireland)

MIssing Sisters is set in America in 1968. The main character is Alice Colossus. Alice is an orphan in the Sacred Heart Home for Girls. Alice has no known siblings or parents until one day at summer camp she was mistaken for a girl by the name of Miami Shaw. Alice wants to know if this girl holds the key to finding her real parents. Read the book to find out.
We really enjoyed the book. The storyline is interesting. It's unputdownable yet it stays realistic.
I'd recommend this book to anyone aged 11 to 13 because some of the language is quite difficult and anyone younger probably wouldn't understand it.

After having read Gregory Maquire's "Wicked", "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister", and "Lost", his book "Mirror, Mirror" was quite the follow up. Gregory Maguire is a visionary in the art of reinvention of the lost art of story telling.

After reading both "Wicked" and "Son of a Witch," I was expecting "Mirror, Mirror" to follow in the same footsteps - a different look at the Snow White fairy tale. If this is what you are looking for, you will be disappointed. I had a hard time getting into the book and I kept waiting for it to circle back around to the original Snow White story. Other than the fact that the character Bianca does spend years with the rock "dwarves" while sleeping, that's about as close as it gets. That being said, if you can read this novel just for what it is, you will enjoy the unique and political writing style that Maquire is known for. FYI - a little knowledge of Italian and Venetian terminology wouldn't hurt either.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It's one of those books you wish you could read with your eyes closed so you could just drift off in your own fantasy world. Oh, how I would love it if they would make this into a play just as they did Wicked. I would really suggest giving this book a shot with an open mind.

Maguire's retelling of Snow White my favorite of all. Snow White, a fairy tale especially bittersweet to myself, is one of his very best works. His knowledge of history, time period, and the Church is impeccable. Maguire weaves historical facts into an archetypal myth creating a beautiful tapestry of novel. Recommended for anyone who loves fairy tales and/or the deeper meanings behind them.

Amber LaShea Holmes
author of SNOW WHITE ON ACID: NINE FANTASICAL NIGHTMARES

In my language arts class we have to read three books every nine weeks. I have read my first book called Six Haunted Hairdos. As I read this book I went into a journey. I would love to take you with me on the journey again. So here we go!

Oh wow, look where we are. We are in the book called the Six Haunted Hairdos. Now we can see who the author is. The author is Gregory McGuire and he has a collection of books, just like this book I'm about to talk about. The book we are inside is a story. This book is also adventurous and has a lot of mystery in it.

Now we move to the first page of this book and we can work our way through the book. This book is about when Sammy Grubb and his club of the copycats try to convince the students of Josiah Fawcett Elementary that ghosts do exist. Thekla Mustard, who fronts the all girl club cynical tattletales, sees a perfect opportunity to spook up a plan and scare the boys. With the help of her friends they get together six wacky, crazy, and scary wigs, a lot of make-up, and some costumes. The tattletales transforms themselves into the six Haunted Hairdos, as they frightened the boys out of their pants. The tattletales give the boys a few scares. When Thekla Mustard takes her club to her house, they go up the room and Thekla congratulates them on what a fine job they did. When Pearl Hotchkiss hears the girls talking about scaring the boys again, Pearl runs to boy's club and tells the boys what the girls have been doing. So the boy's try to get back at the girls. When they get ready to scare the girls, all of a sudden an elephant comes out and Salim thinks it's a ghost of an elephant named baby Tusker. He thinks the ghost is coming to haunt him, but it wasn't. So they went to go find the tattletales after they made a plan. The girls went to go meet the boys and the boys said they wanted to meet the six haunted hairdos. Thekla said she didn't think they would come out, when all of a sudden the six haunted hairdos appeared. The girls ran down the hill and at the bottom they saw an elephant named baby Tusker.

Did you like the short story about the book? Now would you like to tell me any parts about the book you liked? I know I've got some, so here they are. The strong part of the book is that throughout the whole story it never gets boring and has good endings to each chapter. There are no weak parts to the book. Gregory McGuire has wonderful books because they are funny and interesting... I like that.

I think this book would be recommended for children in fourth grade through eighth grade. Well, I hoped you enjoyed your journey through this book. We've got to go before we get taken by a customer, so bye.
Sincerely, Hannah

The "Tattletales" (all but one of the girls) and the "Copycats" (the boys) in Miss Earth's class can't agree on the existence of ghosts. The Tattletales insist there's no such thing. The Copycats insist there IS such a thing, especially after seeing something large and inhuman roaming the area.

A new Copycat, Salim from Bombay, has a secret that might explain the mysterious ghost seen by the boys, but he's afraid to tell them. In the meantime, the Tattletales plan to scare the boys by posing as the Six Haunted Hairdos. If the children of Hamlet, Vermont don't watch out, they'll scare the pants off each other!

Clever and humorously written, this book will capture elementary students' imaginations with the Copycats' and Tattletales' adventures. Besides the fun, kids will also be shown examples of compassion and generosity, traits often lacking in today's media. Equally important, this chapter book is easily read for intermediate readers.

Gregory Maguire's magic touch brings another installment to a great series for kids.

Reviewed by Christina Wantz Fixemer
9/3/2006

Six Haunted Hairdos is the sequel to Seven Spiders Spinning. It is about to rival clubs, The Copycats (boys) and The Tatletails (girls). In this book the members of The Copycats believe in ghosts and state so in class. The Tatletails decide to play a joke on The Copycat's "silly" belief and give The Copycats their idea on girls thrown at them. This joke turns out to be less fake then they thought, as The Tatletails and The Copycats meet real ghosts and have to unite the ghosts, and set aside their club differences, before it's too late and Hamlet, their town, becomes filled with ghosts. This book is exciting and portrays some very interesting veiws on the rivalrey between boys and girls.

The book I reviewed is called Six Haunted Hairdos. This book was written by Gregory Maguire. Six Haunted Hairdos is a fictional book, and it is sort of a mystery, but at the same time it is an adventure.
A group of girls and a group of boys are always trying to outdo each other. When the girls cook up a wonderful plan to scare the boys, things start getting out of hand. Thelka Mustard, the empress of the girls club, who call themselves the Tattletales, tells the boys that six beauticians were recently killed on a nature trip. Though none of this is true, the boys are not sure whether they should believe this story or not.
Meanwhile, the boys who call their club (...), are having ghost troubles of their own, without Thelka Mustard trying to scare them with her crazy ghost story. Sammy Grubb, who is the emperor (...), thinks that they all saw a baby elephant, though this was no ordinary elephant, it was ghost.
The Tattletales are planning to scare the boys in their "Six Haunted Hairdos" costumes. Thelka leads the boys into the woods so that the "ghost beauticians" can do their jobs. The plan works out great and the boys got scared. Now the boys are even more sure that the baby elephant was a ghost. You should read this book to find out what happens with the ghost elephant and the "Six Haunted Hairdos".
This book's strengths are that it has good details and it is very compelling. It is a good book. The book's weakness is that at times, it can be a little bit confusing.
I think the author Gregory Maguire is a good author who knows how to use details. He writes good books. I would recommend this book to any reader who likes suspenseful, mysterious, and spooky books. If you enjoyed reading this book, then you should read the rest of the book series!

My son, 10.5 tore through it! He couldn't put it down. Something really cool, when your child is reading to themselves and they bust out laughing out loud.

This book is one of the best books I have ever read. It kept me interested through the entire book. I couldn't put it down! I recommend this book for anybody who likes an amusing story and plot and a book that is wild with adventure every second of the story!

This is a cute, humorous book but parents BEWARE! This book is NOT for Santa believers.