Literacy Article

-Written by Charlotte Delacour

This month in the Muggle world, there are
of course many new books coming out. One that my fellow Witches and Wizards may
find appealing is the third installment of the Dorothy Must Die series by
Danielle Paige. The first installment, Dorothy
Must Die, came out in 2014. As you may have guessed, this series focuses on
the old Muggle tale of The Wizard of Oz
by Frank L. Baum. Dorothy Must Die
picks up in present day Kansas with a girl named Amy Gumm, who lives in a
trailer park. Her trailer gets swept up in a tornado, and she finds herself in
Oz, but not the Oz that she had always heard of in the stories. In this Oz,
Dorothy has returned and taken over as a tyrannical ruler. Her three friends,
the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow, are now her evil henchmen. Oz is
being slowly destroyed and drained of magic.

Amy Gumm is recruited by the Order of the
Wicked, or the original "Wicked Witches" from the original tale, and
is tasked with retrieving the Tin Man's heart, the Lion's courage, the
Scarecrow's brain, and then killing Dorothy. Of course, as with any other tale,
not all is as it seems. Join Amy in her undercover mission in a world that she
believed only existed in stories, and see Oz as it's never been seen before.

The books in the main series thus far are Dorothy Must Die, The Wicked Will Rise, and
The Yellow Brick War. There will be
one more full-length novel published in March 2017. If the world particularly
interests you, Danielle Paige has also written six novellas that are available
individually on e-book or as collections in paperback: There's No Place Like Oz, The
Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns,
Heart of Tin, The Straw King, and Ruler of
Beasts. I recommend that you read these in publishing order in between the
full-length novels for the greatest enjoyment.

Look for The Yellow Brick War in stores now!