Elphie: A Wicked Childhood [Audiobook]

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What happened to young Elphaba before her witchy powers took hold in Wicked Almost 30 years after the publication of the original novel, for the first time Gregory Maguire reveals the story of prickly young Elphie, the future Wicked Witch of the West--setting the stage for the blockbuster international phenomenon that is Wicked: The Musical.

Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, will grow to have a feisty and somewhat uncompromising character in adult life. But she is always a one-off, from her infancy; Elphie is the riveting coming-of-age story of a very peculiar and relatable young girl.

Young Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education, haphazard though it must be--until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.

Elphie is destined to be a witch; she bears the markings from childhood--most evidently in her green skin but more obscurely and profoundly in her cunning and perhaps amoral behaviors, as she seeks to make do, to slip by, to sneak out, to endure, and to aspire.

Author Bio

Gregory Maguire is the New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked--the beloved classic that is the basis for the blockbuster Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name and the major motion picture--Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. His series Another Day continues the story of Oz with The Brides of Maracoor, The Oracle of Maracoor, and The Witch of Maracoor, and his other novels include A Wild Winter Swan, Hiddensee, After Alice, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and Mirror Mirror. Some of his novels for children include Cress Watercress, Leaping Beauty, and Egg & Spoon, winner of a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor. He lives in New England and France. Edoardo Ballerini is an American writer, director, film producer and actor. He has won many awards for his audiobook narration; within only a few years after beginning his narrating career, he won several AudioFile Earphones Awards for his work, including Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, Jodi Picoult's The Storyteller and Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins. He narrated Kenzaburo Oe's Nobel Prize Winning Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, Joseph Finder's The Moscow Club as well as works by John Edward and Daniel Stashower. In television and film, he is best known for his role in The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush and Romeo Must Die. The silky-voiced Ballerini is trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.