Top 10 Updates of Classic Stories: Yellow Brick War Author Danielle Paige Shares Her Picks

Danielle Paige’s darkly down to earth Oz series, Dorothy Must Die, uses a self-aware narrator—Amy Gumm, a modern Kansas girl who’s swept off to Oz by, what else, a tornado—creepy twists, and loads of narrative magic to turn L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz into her own twisted playground. Book one, Dorothy Must Die, finds Amy joining the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, a band of witches devoted to bringing the midwestern girl turned magic-stealing tyrant down. In The Wicked Will Rise, Amy navigates a rejuvenated Oz, fighting her darkest supernatural instincts while the land around her regains its own magic. And in Yellow Brick War, out this week, she’s exiled to a place she thought she’d never return to, fighting to reunite with her magical cohort and finally destroy Dorothy. Here’s Paige on her 10 favorite YA retellings, from fairy tales revisited to literary classics reimagined.
 
What is it about retellings? We fall in love with the original stories when we are kids and we never get tired of them. Then they grow up with us and some take dark and twisty turns in new versions.

The Lunar Chronicles, by Marissa Meyer
Marissa Meyer’s space odyssey starring a cyborg Cinderella named Cinder might be my all-time favorite. Marissa’s pastiche of fairy tales showed me it was okay to take Dorothy to the next level!

A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas
A spectacular and sexy loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Shadow Queen, by C.J. Redwine
A princess has to avenge her father by killing a king! And it has dragons!

A Wicked Thing, by Rhiannon Thomas
A Sleeping Beauty retelling in which a girl is awoken—but does not want to marry the prince who kissed her awake.

Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire is my jam. For obvious reasons!

Crimson Bound, by Rosamund Hodge
This is Red Riding Hood—but Hodge writes her a lot less innocent than we remember.

Stray, by Elissa Sussman
Takes on the mysterious world of the fairy godmothers, and focuses on a princess who is sentenced to a life of service as one of those fairy godmothers!

Great, by Sara Benincasa
A modern twist on The Great Gatsby, a tale we all read in high school. But what if Nick and Gatsby were teenage girls?

A Study in Charlotte, by Brittany Cavallaro
Sherlock Holmes’ great-great-great-granddaughter meets Watson’s great-great-great-grandson, and they get sucked into a mystery of their own at boarding school.

Bright Smoke, Cold Fire, by Rosamund Hodge
This book isn’t even out yet, but I had to include it because I managed to snag an early copy and can’t wait for the rest of the world to get their hands on it. It’s a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet but with magic in a dark world beautifully realized—and we already know Rosamund Hodge is a master of retellings!
Yellow Brick War is on sale now.