Long description:

Experience the magic of Oz as you've never seen it before with this brand-new graphic novel adaptation of Gregory Maguire's masterpiece Wicked, the inspiration for the Broadway show and major motion picture-the first in a two-part series featuring gorgeous full-color illustrations by Scott Hampton.

Like Dorothy when she crash-landed all those years ago, prepare to be swept into a new and colorful world in this first-ever graphic novel adaptation of Wicked. While the long-running Broadway musical and major motion picture take inspiration from this iconic novel, this is Oz as Gregory Maguire wrote it-a fantastical story with dark edges that explores morality and ambition, love and friendship, and discovering one's inner power.

Elphaba was born with emerald-green skin-no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz's most promising young citizens.

But Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are everywhere. Animals-those creatures with voices, souls, and minds-are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals-even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.

"An outstanding work of imagination." - USA Today

"I knew that Gregory Maguire had come up with a genius idea the moment I heard about Wicked. It's a book that has changed a lot of lives, including mine." - Stephen Schwartz, composer and lyricist of Wicked: The Musical

"Maguire did something truly remarkable with this novel, in managing to inhabit, enlarge, deepen and find new dimensions in a world that had been invented by another writer, and in doing so make something entirely new. It's an astonishing achievement." - Philip Pullman on Wicked

"Listen up, Munchkins. Stop your singing, stop the dancing. The Wicked Witch is no longer dead. But not to worry. Gregory Maguire's shrewdly imagined and beautifully written first novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, not only revives her but re-envisions and redeems her for our times." - Newsday on Wicked

"At the heart of this remarkable, unforgettable novel is a wildly original premise-one that only a writer with Gregory Maguire's intellect and daring could have dreamed up: that the Wicked Witch of the West was a real woman, with an actual name, and her own story to tell. It was radical when Gregory first wrote it, and remains radical. It has the power to reshape one's view of the world." - Winnie Holzman, co-writer of Wicked: The Musical