Customer Reviews

The Wizard of Oz

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In this classic, Baum describes the tale of poor Dorothy, who is hurled by a cyclone away from her uncle and aunt in Kansas into a strange and magical world of wizards and witches. Fortunately Dorothy has the help of several companions that she meets in this new world - a stuffed scarecrow who wants brains, a tin woodsman who wants a heart, and a cowardly lion who wants courage. Together with Dorothy - who wants a return trip to Kansas - they travel to the emerald city where Oz is wizard, to ask him to make their wishes come true. Their journey is fraught with adventures, and when they finally meet Oz they discover a terrible truth, that leads them into even more challenges and adventures. The magical fantasy of this tale has pleased readers of all ages for a century, and it's not hard to see why. Baum spins a wonderfully enchanting tale that includes wicked witches, flying monkeys, talking mice, and other fantastic creatures.

Is this book more than just a fantasy thrill? Some literary critics have proposed that Baum - a strong believer in individualism and self-confidence - is working with themes about self-esteem and self-reliance. This is quite plausible, especially considering that the brains, heart and courage sought by the scarecrow, woodsman and lion are abilities that they clearly already possess - they just need to recognize them and use them. And Dorothy herself discovers that when the wizard can't help her, she must and can rely on herself. Other literary critics have claimed that "The Wizard of Oz" needs to be read as an elaborate political allegory where the various characters represent various social classes and financial structures - a not impossible suggestion, but one that's somewhat difficult to defend. Ultimately, however, "The Wizard of Oz" is best enjoyed as a wonderful story. That doesn't mean it is any less of a contribution to English literature, because when appreciated as a brilliant story, you're sure to come back to it again and again, as are your children and grandchildren. It's precisely this universal appeal that makes "The Wizard of Oz" a true classic.

I have to admit, until this year I didn't care much for the Wizard of Oz. It was my wife's favorite movie (and she even has checks with Oz scenes on them), but it never was "fantasy" enough for me. I had been an avid modern fantasy/sci-fi reader until this year when I started reading classics like the Hobbit, the Chronicles of Narnia, and ultimately I picked up the Wizard of Oz.

This book is a wonderful read and I fully intend to finish the entire series. There is something so pure and simple about Baum's tale that I find myself entranced and wanting more. This book enchanted me, and immersed me in a world I wished I could visit. I love feeling amazed when I read a book, and this book amazed me.

The only thing I didn't care for in this edition is the time spent by Eloise McGraw in the forward addressing the writing style and prose of Baum. For those of you concerned that this is not the Grapes of Wrath, well...is isn't. It also is everything I need in 2006 and the world is heavy with war and hatred: a fantasy tale that takes me away from my troubles and sets me sailing into Oz. I am very glad this isn't classic literature...very glad. I hope you understand that statement as a comment of praise for Baum.

It is unfortunate that most people know The Wizard of Oz only by the movie. To be perfectly honest, I found the movie bland compared to the book. For those who have read the book, many don't know that there was thirteen other Oz books written by L. Frank Baum. People who have read the first fourteen probably don't know that five other authors wrote more Oz books after Baum's death, making a total of forty books in the original series. The Wizard of Oz is a wonderful book for anyone no matter what age you are. Just remember to forget every thing you saw in the movie. Most people are surprise when the story doesn't end where the movie ends. When you,re finished the book try the other books in the series. I think you would enjoy them all.

It's amazing how little people know about this book. I've seen only one review note that this story is an economic parable, not just a fable for children, and the reviewer who mentioned it made it sound like this was a wacky, unrealistic modern interpretation of a simple children's tale.

Not so!

Baum wrote this story as an analogy for the bimetallic standard, an issue that people actually cared about around the turn of the century but now hardly know ever existed, since we don't back our money with anything anymore. But there was a time, and The Wizzard of Oz (short for ounce, as in an ounce of gold, as in the issue of price-ratios) was written during that period, when the hottest issue on the political plate was that of the bimetallic standard--how and if it should be used. Baum, incidentally, was an enthusiastic political participant, was, in fact, probably present during William Jennings Bryan's famous "cross of gold" speech.

But no one knows this anymore. The film is much to blame. Replacing the SILVER shoes of the wicked witch of the east(ern financial establishment) with ruby slippers is inexcusable, even if people don't know or care about these issues now. The silver shoes (silver standard) on the yellow brick road (gold standard) is a vital immage. Ah well. Still a good story.

This story all started when a farm girl from Kansas named Dorothy Gale, and her little dog Toto got sucked into a tornado and landed in a fairyland named Oz. In Oz she meets a bunch of strange characters, a scarecrow, tin woodsman, and a cowardly lion. Together they go on a mission to see the wizard of oz by following the yellow brick road. Each one wanting a different wish. On the way to the wizard they come across multiple things. And when they finally got to Emerald city the wizard told them that they must first kill the wicked witch of the west if they want him to make there wishes come true. Eventually they succeed in doing that along with multiple hard things to do. After all that they find out that the wizard is a "humbug" and he grants everyone's wishes. Except for Dorothy's wich is for her to return back home. So now Dorothy and her friends go on another adventure to find the Good Witch of the South. Well they found her and Dorothy got back home along with her dog Toto, and she had what she needed all along in order for her to return home. Personally in my opinion I enjoyed the book better then the movie. I would recommend this book to anyone with a good imagination, because I kept imagining the story as I read it. The book has some drawings in it wich makes imagining things a lot easier, it has drawings of the main characters, villains, and some of the scenes in the book such as there journey on the yellow brick road. I would also recommend this book to anyone if the ages of 10 and up.

The Wizard of Oz is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I still have to say that I like the book better. Why? The book has more weird stuff in it than the movie does; probably because of theatrical limitations like time, budget, and technological contraints. For instance, the Wicked Witch of the West in the book has only one eye. Nowadays computer graphics could make that possible in a film, but back in the day, most movies couldn't pull off effects like that.

The book and the movie deviate from each other quite a bit, but both include essentially the same story. I'm glad the movie didn't try to copy the book directly, and changed some parts to not only fit the limits it had, but to make the whole story more movie-esque - like really jazzing up Munchkin Land and making it smaller than the book implied it was. (Dorothy is of the same height as the Munchkins in the book.)

One thing in the book that I thought was really cool was that the Wizard of Oz shows himself in multiple forms, not just the big head. He's even a lady at one point. Also I like the hammer-head guys at the end of the book. L. Frank Baum really showed me his creative abilities there.

On a side note, there are some violent scenes in the book, particularly involving multiple beheadings at a time.

I really think that if you only see the movie and don't read the book, you're missing out. This book contains the REAL Tinman, and the REAL Scarecrow. The ones from the movie are just copies. Darn good copies, but still copies. Oh, the things a good book from a good author can inspire!

In his introduction to the first American fairytale that went on to become one of the most famous and beloved movies of all time, author L. Frank Baum says a rather extraordinary thing. Discussing the purpose of the old fairytales by Grimm and Andersen, Baum tells us that such tales existed both to entertain children and provide a moral by means of "horrible and blood-curdling" incident. True enough, but Baum goes on to say that his book falls outside this typical definition of a fairytale, telling us that: "the story of the Wizard of Oz was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairytale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out."

Reading The Wizard of Oz for the first time made me wonder if Baum was even aware of what he'd written, or if perhaps someone else had written this introduction (someone who hadn't read the book), for The Wizard of Oz is positively jam-packed full of beheadings, monsters, witches, deaths and other terrors, all focused on a character that embodies the quintessential childhood fear: that of being lost and unable to return home. Indeed, with his description of Uncle Henry in the very first chapter, Baum writes: "He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke." Not quite the cheerful fairytale Baum promises, is it?

But of course, this isn't a bad thing. If we want to enjoy the light, then there has to be some shadows, and throughout Baum's story there is a perfect blend of happiness and pain, wonderment and horror as Dorothy Gale traverses the Land of Oz in her attempts to get home to Kansas. I just find it rather bemusing that the author was apparently wholly unaware of this!

Inevitably, one can't help but compare Baum's original story with the movie-version, and it's interesting to compare the areas in which the two differ. There's still a little girl called Dorothy who lives with her Uncle Henry, Aunt Em and her dog Toto, and she's still caught up in a cyclone that whisks her away to the Land of Oz. On waking up, she finds that her house has landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, much to the delight of the diminutive Munchkins, who have been slaves under her rule. Rewarded with the Witch's Silver Shoes (*not* Ruby Slippers, which were an innovation of the movie in order to make the most of Technicolor), Dorothy is told to follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and the Wizard of Oz, a mysterious figure who holds the best hope of getting her home again.

And of course there are the familiar and beloved figures of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion, stalwart friends to Dorothy on her journey, and all desiring some internal quality (a brain, a heart and courage, respectively), completely unaware that they already have these traits in abundance. There's also the surprising Wizard of Oz, the evil Wicked Witch of the West (not as prevalent here as she was in the movie) and the good witches of the North and South (who in the movie are combined into the singular character of Glinda).

But there are plenty of things of Baum's creation that the movie left out, such as a community of talking field mice and their Queen, a city of tiny china people, and a whole range of other bizarre inhabitants that would have been entirely impossible for the movie to recreate. The book also gives us more background into certain people and places. For example, I was delighted to find that the book gives us background on the Tin Woodman, detailing how exactly he came to be made of tin, which is a rather poignant tale of lost love. And as it turns out, there is a lot more to those creepy flying monkeys and the Emerald City than the movie shows us.

In the movie, marvels are introduced one after the other in quick succession, making Oz a rather abstract and random place, much akin to Lewis Carroll's Wonderland in the "Alice" stories, (which makes a sort-of sense considering the film presents Oz as a dream that takes place in a concussed Dorothy's mind), but the literary Oz has some semblance of order and symmetry to it. The country is divided by color and direction, with the yellow-clad Winkies in the west, the red-clad Quadlings in the south, the blue-clad Munchkins in the east, and of course the green inhabitants of the Emerald City.

Apologies if this review has ended up more like a comparison piece between the film and the book, but having been brought up with fond memories of the film, and approaching the book for the first time in adulthood, it was rather inevitable that the two would be held up against one another. In any case, reading the original story served to convince me that both the book and the film are necessary to appreciate each one, and any childhood would be all the richer for having been exposed to both!

you have got to read this book i love it absolutly loveit it is great trust me you would love it you have just got to read it most people dont really think about reading this book its all about Harry Potter dont get me wrong i like harry potter but everyone knows about them nobody knows about this book that is why im posting it on the internet so please please reade it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Like many, perhaps most, adults, I had only been familiar with L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the classic 1939 movie. It was therefore an interesting exercise to read the original version of Dorothy's story--the first book, published in 1899, of what came to be a very lengthy series--and compare it with the film version. There are some substantial differences between the two. In the film version, Dorothy's journey to Oz is an unreal episode, an elaborate dream experienced after being hit on the head. Her dream world and her real life, meanwhile, were symmetrical insofar as some of the principal characters from Kansas were translated into characters in Oz. There is no such symmetry in Baum's version. The witch-like Miss Gulch and humbuggy Professor Marvel, the farm hands Hickory, Huck, and Zeke do not appear in the book. Further, Dorothy's house really is transported to Oz in the cyclone, and when she returns to Kansas Dorothy does so bodily: that is, she travels from Oz and does not merely wake from a dream. Smaller differences between the book and film versions are numerous.

On the whole, I think that the movie tells a tighter, more interesting story than does the book. The Wicked Witch of the West--whose demise in the book is strangely anticlimactic--plays a much bigger role in the film. This holds the story together nicely just as does the symmetry between Dorothy's real and unreal worlds. The movie also omits a good many of the less interesting episodes included in the book, such as Dorothy's adventures among the Dainty China people. What the book has to offer, in turn, is more on the characters' back stories, in particular those of the Tin Woodman and, of all creatures, the Flying Monkeys--much maligned, misunderstood beasts that they are. Who would have guessed their sad plight from the Monkeys' nightmare-inducing depiction in the movie?

While some of Baum's book could have been excised without losing anything, and though the movie tells an arguably better story, Baum's writing is pleasant and his characters well-developed and interesting. It's not surprising that the book has inspired so much affection over the years.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

The Wizard of Oz is a well-made children's literature and very American fairy tale.

Oz's answer to Dorothy and her companion is quite a right one.
To win "hearts", "brains" and "courage" and "returning to home" they should make efforts and do something worthwhile. Unlike European fairy tales use of magic power is quite restrained or limited. Even Dorothy wearing her magic boots and hat, the writer made her unaware of the effect. Power, strength or ability you need to make a living is not something automatically confered upon from the witch nor wizard. Through a number of adventures they eventually earn rights to claim what they desire.

The storyline and the moral of the story quite fit the founding principles of America and presented to the child in such a charming manner. The movie in 1939 based on this story is also impressive and can be recommendable.