The wonderful Wizard of Oz

English language

Published July 15, 2010

ISBN:
978-0-00-742451-1
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4 stars (18 reviews)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an American children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow, originally published by the George M. Hill Company in May 1900. It has since seen several reprints, most often under the title The Wizard of Oz, which is the title of the popular 1902 Broadway musical adaptation as well as the iconic 1939 live-action film. The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy Gale in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home in Kansas by a cyclone. The book is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The Library of Congress has declared it "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale." Its groundbreaking success, and that of the Broadway musical adapted from the novel led Baum to write thirteen …

6 editions

It gave me the warm fuzzies!

4 stars

I went into this knowing practically nothing about the story. I've never seen the movie (ANY movie), had never read the book, and only knew what I'd been able to glean from memes and other pop-culture references.

It was pretty good. I enjoyed the forward too, which made multiple references to how the book differs from the movie, and although I'd not seen the movie, I was familiar enough with things like the red slippers and the "there's no place like home" quote. Neither of which appear in the book.

It's a fine story and I enjoyed it. One thing that I'm sure the author didn't expect to stick with me, but it did because of current sensibilities, is how the singular genderless pronoun ("they" today) used to be "he". Even when explicitly referencing a hypothetical female, the author uses "he" -- It was something along the lines of, "If …

It's not the movie, but it's good

3 stars

Reminds me of my reaction to "Raiders of the Lost Arc", a movie I didn't like at all. The larger reasons I didn't like that aren't relevant, but one of the most annoying things about it was that every line in the movie had been parodied to death such that the delivery of the lines in the parodies was better than they were in the inceptive movie. With "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", this is also true... but the lines were way better in the film adaptation, which is incredible. There are certain creative flourishes here and there in the book that couldn't have made it into the film, but the overall package can't help but pale in comparison to its essentially perfect adaptation. So it's a bit underwhelming, but still quite nice.

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