Customer Reviews

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Books of Wonder)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While all of Baum's books are great, overall I think this was the one that I enjoyed the most. Like the very first book, the plot is simple. Dorothy gets pulled into a magical world against her will, and she wants to get home. She then goes through a series of adventures trying to achieve her goal. Although the book has "In Oz" in the title, Dorothy and the Wizard spend very little time actually in Oz. But don't let this put you off. The underground lands that they pass through are every bit as exciting and magical as the different lands actually in Oz. The ending (how they escape the underground world) is a bit weak, but the imaginative countries that they pass through and the adventures they have in each more than make up for this. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is a book that you will want to start reading again as soon as you finish, but don't. Go on to the next Oz book and then the next. While I believe that this was the best of the 14 original books in the series, they are all wonderful and I would recommend that everyone read the entire series from beginning to end. And then try the books written by some of the other authors. While none are as inspired as those written by Baum, many of them are very good.

And if you've read all the Oz books and are looking for other titles that are just as magical and just as inspired, try the Chronicles of Narnia, King Fortis the Brave or Abarat. All will introduce you to other magical worlds that are every bit as fun to visit as Oz.

This is one of my favorite Oz books. We see Dorothy and the Wizard reunite, of course, but there are some interesting things going on. The Wizard has become a grand character; Baum has thrown his own nature into him and has made him real to us. The Wizard is now a resourceful, sometimes devious, sardonic, yet compassionate man. The story delves into the bizarre with the Glass City and its vegetable people (and their gruesome demise). The Gargoyles are quite disturbing in their emotionally hollow, wooden world. The Braided Man of Pyramid Mountain provides dry humor (here we see Baum's love of puns). Esentially this is one of the more original works of Baum, with quixotic new characters, and further development of those we already knew. I think perhaps Ozma comes into her own in this novel; she is what a queen should be, loyal to her subjects, but not above the law; she is regal, kind yet firm, passionate and loving. Baum has created a fearsome yet beautiful per! sonage in Ozma. This is a great read; I would suggest it to non-Ozophiles so that the MGM movie can be challenged, and the true Oz can be appreciated in its majesty of fantasy, humor, horror, and splendor.

While not quite as compelling or dramatic as other installments in the Oz series, "Dororthy and the Wizard in Oz" is a pleasant follow up to "Ozma of Oz" (the strongest of all the early Oz entries). Baum doesn't try to accomplish too much in this tale--his main intent seems to get that humbug of a wizard back to Oz. Along the way there are some amusing adventures, populated with wonderful new creatures and characters. As a child, I especially enjoyed the scene (and illustration) in which the Wizard slices the vegetable king cleanly in half, though the escape from the gargoyles is also quite engaging. I think girls will love this book for the return of Dorothy and for the rascal, Eureka the kitten, while the boys will love the Wizard's dastardly sword and slights-of-hand that he performs throughout the book.

In this Oz adventure the wizard is reintroduced to the storyline in the darkest of Lyman Frank Baum's books about Oz. It starts with an earthquake and progresses through dark sectors of the earth. From the Glass city to the dragon layer near the crust of the Earth the whole story reminds me of Dante and his rungs of Hell, each layer having inhabitants that are queer and creepy. This dark adventure eventually concludes on a happy note but not before introducing us to exciting new characters and broadening the Oz universe. Dorthy and the Wizard of Oz is one of the stories I most cherish from L. Frank Baum because it is slightly creepy and dark. Amazingly creative and brilliantly written a book everyone will enjoy.

I think Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is a exciteing book which is funny and intresting in a lot of ways.I read all the Oz books but I think this one is one of his best!I definetly rate this a 5 star book! From Hallie McPherson

For the third time, Dorothy is swept up by terrifying events, this time falling through the earth in a California quake accompanied by a kid named Zeb, a horse called Jim, and Eureka the cat, who has replaced Toto. They all fall past weird, colored suns and land in the domain of the Mangaboos, who are vegetable people. True to nineteenth century plots (OK, this one was written in 1908), the natives are hostile, but the intrepid American kids and their animals defeat all the baddies. The kids are now accompanied by the Wizard, who, in his balloon, has also fallen through a crack. They fight with invisible bears and with flying wooden gargoyles before they reach Oz via a classic deus ex machina turn of events. The first three-quarters of the book is vintage Oz adventure stuff---kids will love it and so will you, no matter what age you are. I have loved this book ever since I first read it well over half a century ago. I remember how dark and dangerous it seemed to me then. The impressions of the underground scenes lasted in my mind for decades. Even when I read the end of Zola's "Germinal", I remembered DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ--not perhaps so sophisticated a comment, but true anyhow. The last quarter is a kind of reunion, where we say hello to all the old characters and see how they are doing. It's like Baum ran out of ideas, but since he wrote a book every year, millions of kids were probably waiting for an update (similar to the Harry Potter series.) They would have been happy to read about their favorite characters again. I know I was.

This volume in Baum's series may not be the most exciting or well-written, but it had a special atmosphere, very threatening, with more violence than normal in Oz books---cutting, shooting, burning, etc. The reunion and party scenes at the end, including the bad behavior of the American animals, and their return home, are probably too long. Still, if you are an Oz fan, or want to be, you can't miss DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ.

Published in June 1908, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is the fourth book of L. Frank Baum's Oz series. Baum, the self-proclaimed Royal Historian of Oz, opens with a playful complaint to his "loving tyrants" that he has plenty of stories about other fantasy lands that he'd love to share, but he'll dutifully detail the latest of adventures of their favorite farmgirl Dorothy Gale.

Fresh off the trip from Australia, the high-spirited heroine is on her way to join Uncle Henry at a California ranch before heading back home to Kansas. With her kitten Eureka (yes, as in "I found it!") in tow, the girl is picked up by her second cousin and new friend Zeb and his old cab horse Jim when a violent earthquake opens up the ground and swallows them all. After a lengthy tumble and the realization that both Jim and Eureka can now speak, the travelers find themselves in the strange land of the Mangaboos, cruel vegatable people who blame them for the Rain of Stones and sentence them all to death.

Just then the humbug Wizard himself appears in a hot air balloon much like the one that blew him out of Oz so long ago. With his help, the others are able to escape these uncaring creatures and embark on an adventurous, many times dangeorus, journey back to the earth's surface. They travel through the Valley of Voe (a beautiful country where the people are invisible as well as the gruesome bears that eat them) and battle monstrous-looking Gargoyles (or Gurgles as Dorothy calls them), and climb the Pyramid Mountain before reaching the land of Oz.

Mr. Baum crafted another winner to the series with this one. First of all, the Wizard (whose real name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs) is back and we get a deeper look at his life before and after his reign over the Emerald City. Jim is a no -osense, at times gruff, character who gets a bit of a big head when he gets to Oz, but he's brought back down to size by some of the inhabitants. I loved that part. Eureka, Eureka, Eureka. How deliciously mischievous and unapologetic she is. There are several moments when she speaks openly about wanting to eat at least one the Wizard's nine pet piglets and never demures when the others scold her for it. Once in Oz, she's put on trial after one of them goes missing and never once does the obstinant kitten break a sweat.

The rest of the characters are enjoyable. Even the side ones like the Braided Man, an inventor who once lived above ground but fell into a hole of his own creation (he mostly manufactured holes for Swiss Cheese) and made his home halfway up Pyramid Mountain. He bides his time manufacturing rustles for silk skirts and uses colored ribbons to braid his long white hair and beard. He looks like a white Busta Rhymes or Lil' John. No lie. Lovely artwork as always by John R. Neill. His interpretation of the Wizard is less Mr. Magoo and more Robin Williams.

The downside of this installment is how much darker and more scary it is than the first three books. The hair raising encounter with the invisible bears in particular. I was also annoyed that Dorothy gets the "damsel in distress" treatment this time around. She's not exactly helpless, but she's not as headstrong as before and mostly relies on the Wizard for help. A small gripe that doesn't take away from the story. Enjoy!

Baum wrote a number of books about Oz. He called himself the "Royal Historian of Oz." He wrote that he would have liked to compose other books, in addition to those on Oz, but "dear children" have flooded him with letters clamoring for more and more Oz books, so he is complying with their requests. This volume written in 1908 and still interesting today contains twenty tales. He tells about Princess Ozma, Jim the cab-horse, the nine piglets, Eureka the kitten, and Dorothy and the humbug wizard, of course. He promises to write about Dorothy's dog in his next book.

His books are written in simple English with occasional near hard words that children should learn. His descriptions are vivid and are the kind that children delight in reading. For example, Baum describes a train "puffed and groaned and moved slowly away from the track." Another examplle is Dorothy explaining why she called her cat Eureka. "I named my kitten that because I found it," she explained. "Uncle Henry says 'Eureka' means 'I have found it.'" Another example is when a boy tried to get the horse to move, "Dorothy thought he just wiggled one of his drooping ears, but that was all."

Up until our heros get to Oz, this is a fine book. It is nice to see the Wizard again. Jim, Zeb, and Eureka are interesting additions to the series. The underground lands of the Mangaboos, the Valley of Voe, the Braided Man, the Gargoyles, and the Dragonettes are all interesting places with interesting problems for our heros.

Sadly, it falls apart when the character reach a dead end and must employ a Deus ex Machina (i.e. Ozma's magic mirror and the Nome King's wishing belt) to get themselves out of the jam and to Oz. (One problem, grasped immediately by my 5 y.o. is why Dorothy doesn't signal to Ozma, who checks in on her daily at a set time, much earlier and avoid a great deal of hardship and danger.)

Having reached Oz, Zeb is somewhat lost in the re-introduction of old characters and a large dump of expository dialog between Ozma and the Wizard. Jim suddenly becomes a jerk, a troubling change in his characterization, and is pitted against the Sawhorse and the Hungry Tiger. Eureka likewise and inexplicably becomes a more sinister character, apparently deciding to kill and eat Ozma's pet piglet (although meat and fish are in ample supply when offered to Jim), prevented from doing so only by an accident. This leads to a nonsensical trial - although again the problem could have been readily solved by looking for the piglet with Ozma's mirror, or using the Nome King's belt to wish the piglet to appear, or by the piglet having called for help as it was searched for. (It may be that the piglets lose their voice in Oz even though they could speak while underground, although that does not seem to have been established.)

At least for my daughter, the sudden change in characterization of Jim and Eureka was troubling, the trial and the threat of the Woodsman killing Eureka if she was guilty, and the revlation that she was almost guilty, led to an unsatisfactory end to a previously enjoyable book.

This is another good yarn for the kiddos. Baum's storytelling holds up well and his little lessons are timeless (e.g. the dragonettes insisting beauty is the eye of the beholder) in this unique take on a center-of-the earth story. The science is a bit poor in this book as we see earthquakes swallowing people whole, California being beset by gaping quakes every half hour, gravity lessening at the earth's core, and so forth. Nonetheless, this is easy to look past when the audience is small children as opposed to teenagers.

All said and told, this was the least interesting story so far in my opinion, but fine for my young son and fine enough for me to continue purchasing the series.