Day 2 - A signed copy of Wicked by Gregory Maguire

From now until December 13, 2024, we are excited to bring some holiday cheer by unveiling a daily Christmas gift giveaway! There are three exciting ways for you to enter and increase your chances of winning:

1. Engage with Us on Facebook: Join our Facebook Group and leave a comment on that day's post. Remember, you have a limited window of just 24 hours to comment and secure your free entry for that day's gift! One entry per person. - www.facebook.com/groups/mhcisforbooklovers

2. Join the Conversation on Our Blog: Visit our website and share your thoughts by commenting on that day's blog post. Like our Facebook entries, you have 24 hours to submit your comment for a free entry. One entry per person. - www.mhcisforbooklovers.com/blog

3. Make a Meaningful Donation: For every $1 you donate to MHC for Book Lovers or the Spencer Penn Centre through our website, you will receive one entry for each dollar contributed. This means, with a generous spirit, you can increase your entries and allocate them to any gift that catches your eye! Please note the donation form will close on December 13, 2024, at midnight EST. - www.mhcisforbooklovers.com/christmas2024

All entries—including those from our Facebook group, blog comments, and donations—will be compiled and entered into a random drawing for each prize. Don't miss out on the excitement! On December 14, 2024, join us live as we announce the winners and celebrate the holiday spirit together!

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Day 2 - A signed copy of Wicked by Gregory Maguire

The New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande

With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination. 

Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is 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. 

Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name—one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel’s distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire’s Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch. 

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Have you seen Wicked, either the movie or the Broadway production?