After the theatrical success of Wicked, part 1,¹ many parents are learning there was a novel, Wicked by Gregory Maguire. They’re asking: “Is this book good for my kids?”

It turns out the book is very different from the film and the famed Broadway show.

For me, the original book Wicked (1995) has the distinction of holding two firsts in my reading journey. Long before the play’s 2003 debut, this was the first book I requested at Christmas without having read it or other books in the series. All my previous requested books were either treasured favorites that I knew I loved, continuations of series, or random books I found in the Christian Book Distributors catalog. However, I had read Maguire’s other book, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and found this an interesting Cinderella retelling. So when I heard he was writing a new take on The Wizard of Oz, I was very excited and eagerly put it on my Christmas list. ²

At the time, I was attending a Christian college. I’d grown up in church youth group, and while I was not very sheltered, I don’t necessarily read books that are overly graphic or overly sexual. I tend to quickly skip those parts and move on.

For a quick take on the recent Wicked film, see our Onscreen feature from Marian Jacobs, ‘Wicked, Part 1’ Honors the Weak, Not the Woke. The stage show and film are very different from the original book.

On that Christmas Day, I received the Wicked book and quickly started reading. I recall the writing was brisk and fast-paced. But the story began strangely.

For instance, most books don’t start with the birth of the protagonist.

After that, things went from strange to worse. Here I’ll be very frank about why.

Within twenty pages, Elphaba is born and she is “intersex.” Back then, I’d never heard the term. I only remember reading the description of her genitals and being horrified and thinking, Okay, I can recover. But the scene continues. She is born with teeth—a little weird, but not too strange. Then she bites off someone’s finger.

That’s when I closed the book and never finished it.

Readers call this DNF, for Did Not Finish. Wicked is the very first book I DNFed.

To this day, I rarely DNF a book, even seriously bad books. Offhand I can remember less than five books that I DNFed, including one title with a ten-page sex scene that made me keep flipping pages while thinking, “Surely it will be done by now.”

Or the book that bored me out my mind until I finally thought, “I don’t have to finish this; I can just quit.”

Or the book infested by so many typos that I was mentally rewriting as I read.

But I could not finish Wicked. Twenty-five years later, I’m still haunted by the horror and disgust I felt reading those first few pages.

So when parents ask, “I love the musical stage show and film. So why shouldn’t my child read Wicked?” Well, I mentally shudder and take a deep breath. I also feel very thankful the popular musical is an adaptation of the book in name only.