Customer Reviews

LARGE 15 Books in 1: L. Frank Baum's Oz Series. Wonderful Wizard of Oz-Marvelous Land of Oz-Ozma of Oz-Dorothy & Wizard in Oz-Road to Oz-Emerald City of Oz-Patchwork Girl of Oz-Little Wizard Stories

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I like the idea of having all 15 books in one combined book. It seemed like it would make for some fun bed time story reading. However, the small print stopped me in my tracks. I don't feel the book is necessarily of poor quality, however, it is a paper back book, something that seems odd for such a weighty novel. My advice, consider whether or not you feel capable of reading 600+ pages (with no illustrations) of 2-column small font print before making this purchase.

I give this book 5 stars because it is "OZ". I purchased something similar, but much much better from Border's , two years ago. Available from Amazon, look for 'The OZ Chronicles'. Volume 1 and Volume 2 contain all of Baum's Oz books. Green Leather Hardcovers, great size print. Volume 3 contains Baum's other books and stories. Incredible find and value.

So, what do you get? (This is a description of the hardcover edition)

It's a nice solid book, well bound, quite thick (700 plus pages) that makes a good gift. The cover is colorful, and it looks like it'll last for years, even with a bit of mishandling from kids.

You get all of the L. Frank Baum "Oz" stories, except for a few really obscure short stories that were published in the newspapers, where the Wogglebug from "Oz" visits the USA.

The text is printed in two columns, but it's not hard to read - from looking at 'search-inside-the-book', it looks like the hardback is a bit easier to read than the paperback. There aren't any illustrations though.

For a kid who liked the first Oz book and wants to read the others, it's a lot cheaper than buying them all separately!

On balance, recommended, but it looks like it's worth getting the hardcover rather than the paperback.

Finally...the entire collection of original OZ stories complete (albeit some edits were made for today's culture) presents in a single volume. Having read and collected the books as a child I'm more than pleased at having the chance to revisit these stories years later. The perfect fairytale, the world of OZ may seem a bit odd to some modern readers, but the spirit and power of the stories remain.

The book itself is presently very directly; all the illustrations have been removed and the text has been divided into two columns on the page. For some readers it may present a challenge to read, but the book itelf is big enough that it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

This book is a must have for fans of the series who have lost, misplaced, or stored their books away. Pass it on to younger readers as well. Small child may enjoy the illustrations presented in other editions, but this big book is a quick read and many will find themselves totally taken by Oz's charm.

I received the book this morning. All the OZ books in one! A Marvelous idea. I got hooked on these books because of the books Wicked and Son of a Witch. I decided I had to read more.

Other reveiwers have commented on the small print. It is smaller than the average book, but not that small. I can hardly wait to start reading and be transported back to OZ.

I'm working my way through these books. They are charming little tales, perfect for bedtime stories or enjoying on a day off. The only disadvantage with this particular collection is that it is not a hardbound book. The pages are nearly as thin as those in a bible, but the binding is good. If you get this, I suggest getting a sturdy fabric cover or just wrapping it with a brown bag like when you were in school.

The book packs in *all* the Oz stories - I haven't been able to find any other edition that does this. If you want all the stories in one volume, this is definitely the one to go for. Its surprisingly light for such a big book, and and the two column format makes it easy to read. I'm not sure why other reviewers found the print size a problem - I found it absolutely fine, even in dim light.

Its definitely more aimed at adults reading aloud to kids (or big kids!), as it doesn't have pictures. But it does make a really good bedtime story book, as the chapters are quite short so you can do one each night. And it lasts for a very long time!

Overall, a really good value buy that doesn't feel cheap or shoddy. I'm glad I went for this one, rather than buying all the books separately (and more expensively).

An easy way to get all the "Oz" books in one go. We already had The Wizard of Oz, but it's still a lot less expensive to get this all-in-one edition than to buy each of the books separately.

Can't understand why the previous reviewer had a problem with the quality of the book, binding and paper quality was fine on the one I got. The text is in two columns as the book is quite wide, but I didn't have a problem with that. It's printed a bit larger than newspaper print, so if you're OK reading a newspaper then you should be fine with this book.

Great for reading out loud - there's enough here to keep the bedtime stories going for a long, long time!

This is an awesome book! You get all of L. Frank Baum's original stories in one place! The first 15 books on Oz written in their original context - aside from the minor corrections noted by the printers of the book. In my OWN version, I had to go to the Amazon site to find out what corrections were made because the alignment on the printing was off on my book and the first page was cut off, but the rest of the book after the first page where the corrections note was made by the printers was complete. I wish they would compile the books of Ruth Plumly Thompson and the others in the Quasi Seven into a similar collection. It would make finding and buying the books easier.

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Okay, it's a bit late, but I have to retract my prior review, at least in part and say instead that I am rather disappointed in this book as it seems that on the first page of mine, it was poorly printed since the text is cut off on the page of both sides and I had to look it up for verification on their in book review section here to see what they had printed there as I stated in my previous review. But I found out today that it was also a bad buy considering that it seems someone just picked up the texts that were already in public domain and bundled them together and made scans rather than reprinting them, before applying the two column layout because it is riddled with grammatical and punctuation errors that you get when you scan an image of text into a PDF program and it can't tell what marks you are using be it a comma, period or semi-colon. So yeah, I'm rather disappointed. Unfortunately I have found that once the star rating is given, it can't be changed, and I in my previous naivety gave it five stars. If I could do it over, I would give it two stars due to the fact that all of Baum's Oz stories were included, but that still means there was more that was messed up.

This bumper edition is terrific value, containing so many of Frank Baum's wonderful stories. Ideal for kids who can't get enough. Just the book you need for those bedtime stories that kids love to hear before they go off to sleep. It would also make a great gift.