The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I really loved this little book. It's very simplistically written, but it's very wholesome and funny. There are a fair few differences between the book and the 1939 adaptation, so it was enjoyable reading it as I didn't know everything that happened.

The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything. “You people with hearts,' he said once, 'have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.”

This was an important line to me. It made me consider how we might take our beliefs for granted. If we always believe we are right, we simply trust what we are doing. Whereas, the Tin Woodman without a heart, doesn't trust himself to be good, so he is always purposeful with his actions. And I believe this can pertain to many areas of life.

“It is such an uncomfortable feeling to know one is a fool.”

I made the mistake of growing up watching the film and not reading the book until adulthood. They are VERY different. This novel is a lot more graphic and dark. Not at all like the yellow brick road we skipped down with Judy Garland.

This lavishly illustrated picture book is an abridged version of the original book, Wizard of Oz, first in the OZ series. The story bears similarities to the popular movie of the same name, but is quite drastically different. Dorothy hitches a ride on a tornado, and flattens a witch beneath her house, but the magic shoes are silver. She lands in the land of the Munchkins and meets a good witch; not Glinda, this one is kindly and elderly and short. The Good Witch of the North kisses Dorothy on the forehead, giving her a charm that protects her against evil, although Dorothy is unaware of the kiss's power. She and Toto set off on the yellow brick road, in search of the and the powerful Wizard of Oz. En route, they meet the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion. These three new companions learn about the wizard from Dorothy, and decide they can use a little help, too. The Scarecrow wants a brain, the Woodsman wants a heart, and the Lion wants courage. Their journey has many obstacles, however, like the deep abyss in the road or the field of poppies that causes all people and animals to fall asleep. Once they finally reach the Emerald City, they are greeted with the city guard, who locks a pair of green spectacles on everyone's head, even Toto. They are allowed into the wizard's presence, but the vast floating head

This book is such a great version of the classic by L. Frank Baum.The story is condensed but is done so in a way that simply makes it more manageable for children.The shortened version is great with the added pictures as drawn by Charles Santore. This added element of fantastic drawings (interpreted by Charles from the original classic) provides reluctant readers with more incentive to read through this story.I recommend avoiding the expectation that this book will follow the movie version. There are detailed scenes drawn from the original book that were not featured in the movie which may disappoint some readers.Notable examples would be in the scene where the tin woodsman is said to have used his axe to kill 40 wolves and the scarecrow snapped the necks of 40 crows which were all sent by the wicked witch.This book would be suitable for children aged 8-12. It is heavily text-based but is broken up by wonderful illustrations.

When I was a child I read practically every classic children's fantasy book I could get my hands on, or had my parents read them to me. From Lewis and Tolkien to MacDonald and Nesbit, we covered almost all the basics. Baum was of course a member of this distinguished company. Yet while I either continued with the others' bibliography or reread those initial beloved works, he pretty much dropped off my radar after a year or two. Then, when I suggested to my five year-old sister that we read something together this summer, her gaze gravitated to the old, battered copy of The Wizard of Oz sitting on my shelf. Thinking that it would be smart to introduce her to the world of "big books" via a story she already knew, and contemplating the poetic justice of one of reading one of my earliest loves to her, I agreed readily. Though in the end it was a satisfying experience, I cannot say that I am as fascinated by Baum's creation as I once was. It is decent, but pales considerably next to some of those other childhood classics. As another reviewer mentioned, the writing is very odd rhythmically, and as I tried to read it aloud I often found myself stumbling over certain sentences and sometimes had to read them over again. Moreover, the characters are fairly cardboard, not fleshed-out people in the style of Lewis' Narnia and other quality children's books. The Scarecrow is the group's Strategical Planner, The Tin Man is Mr. Weepy, and the Lion is the Noise Machine (though for some reason I ended up reading him as a rather stuffy old English gentleman—right-o, chums!). As for Dorothy, she is Everyman, or Everygirl to be more exact. Only she's not a particularly active Everygirl. Though I am just as tired of the corny girl power heroines that seem to plague modern fiction, it would be nice for her to do something useful that advances the plot. On the other hand, this does illustrate what is for me an important lesson—that the simplest of actions, such as helping a Scarecrow down from his pole or throwing a bucket of water in anger, can have cataclysmic effects. Of course, reading aloud is an endeavor that brings its own benefits. It was fun to watch my sister's excitement at discovering the Land of Oz in its literary form; I was surprised to see how much she picked up on that most adults would just brush by; for instance, when I was reading the descriptions of Kansas being gray and bleak she commented, "That's why there's none color at the beginning of the movie!" I also enjoyed trying to enter the world of the book by bringing the characters to life, but I will not be doing my Queen of the Field Mice voice in public anytime soon. For these reasons, I would suggest trying Oz on your children as an introduction to real chapter books, especially considering that most will already be familiar with the plot. But it is not in any sense a favorite of mine.

The most beautiful of this novel so far. Illustrations to die for.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book, especially in those subtle pieces that the movie didn't/couldn't hold:

"...for when he [The Scarecrow] found himself alone in his room he stood stupidly in one spot, just within the doorway, to wait till morning. It would not rest him to lie down, and he could not close his eyes; so he remained all night staring at a little spider which was weaving its web in a corner of the room, just as if it were not one of the most wonderful rooms in the world."

Didn't expect that I would be sucked into reading the series, but I've already downloaded the second book.

I love the somewhat haphazard feeling of the book; the fact that the wicked witch is not such a central character as in the movie; and the clever prose.

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)I think it's fairly safe by now to assume that nearly everyone in Western society is familiar with The Wizard of Oz, most of us because of the classic 1939 movie adaptation; and many realize as well that author L. Frank Baum ended up penning a whole series of sequels, because of the original book's astounding success back at the turn of the 20th century when it was first published -- 13 sequels altogether, before his death in 1919, which after the movie's success twenty years later became a literal merchandising empire, spawning hundreds more official sequels by various authors and hundreds more unofficial ones once the characters moved into the public domain. And like many others, I've always been interested in what these 14 "canonical" Oz books have to say; and that's why I decided this winter to sit down and read them all in a row for the first time, easy to do because of them being available for free at both Project Gutenberg and the email subscription service DailyLit (which is how I myself read them, and in fact is how I read many of the older books you see reviewed here; I'm a big fan of theirs, and highly recommend them).But of course, to even approach these books with the right mindset, it's important to understand that like so many other one-hit-wonders, Baum was not only eluded by success in most of his other endeavors but was an active failure at them -- in the 1870s, for example, he unsuccessfully tried his hand at breeding fancy poultry (a national fad at the time), then in the 1880s opened his own theatre and became one of the first-ever Americans to produce modern-style stage musicals, apparently a little too ahead of its time, then in the 1890s moved to the Dakota Territory and opened a dry-goods store that eventually failed, as well as starting a newspaper that folded too. So it was sort of a case of random lightning in a bottle when he decided in the late 1890s to try his hand at children's literature, and ended up with his very first title being the most popular kid's book in America for two years straight, and no surprise that Baum then spent the rest of his life desperately trying to figure out how to bottle that lightning again. Because now that I've read it myself, I can confirm that the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz is astonishingly great, a sort of miraculous combination of traits that makes for an almost perfect children's story; and although most of it follows the same storyline seen in the '39 movie, there are also significant differences, making it worth your while to sit and read the book version if you have the interest. (And by the way, for some really interesting reading, check out the academic analysis that was done of this book in the 1960s, arguing that most of its details symbolically correspond almost exactly to various political and economic issues of the late 1800s, including the yellow brick road representing the much-discussed gold standard of that age, the scarecrow representing the then-hot Populist Party, Toto representing the teetotaler [prohibitionist] movement, and a lot more.)But of course, there are a couple of details about this book that have been forgotten over the decades too, which also help explain its record-shattering success -- it was an unusually lavish book for its time, for example, with two-toned illustrations on every page and several full-color plates, and let's also not forget that Baum himself mounted a Broadway-style musical of Oz just two years after the book was published, a huge hit which toured nationally for a decade and that was even more insanely popular than the book itself (including making national stars out of vaudeville performers Fred Stone and David Montgomery, playing the Scarecrow and Tin Man; the stage production left out the Cowardly Lion altogether, which is why he is also barely seen in any of the 13 canonical sequels). And so that's why when Baum attempted starting up other fantasy series in the wake of Oz's success, hoping to turn all of them into lucrative franchises like the original, the audience mostly responded with yawns; and that's why Baum eventually went back to writing more and more Oz books as the 20th century continued, because by now the strength of the brand far outweighed the relative writing skills of Baum when it came to any particular volume.That's why, at least to adults, it's perhaps actually the introductions to each book that are the most fascinating thing about them; because to be frank, most of the books follow a pretty familiar formula, with a danger-filled quest involving various kooky characters that is usually finished about two-thirds of the way through, followed by a massive parade or party that lets Baum trot out the growing number of main characters added to this universe with each title. (And by the way, prepare yourself for Baum's unending love of the deus-ex-machina plot device; over half the books end along the lines of, "And then our heroes took possession of a super-duper magical device, which they waved in the air and all their troubles went away.") In fact, for those who don't know, that's why the official map of Oz and its surrounding lands eventually grew so large, because Baum still hadn't given up on his dream of having a whole series of kid-lit cash cows out there generating revenue for him, and so would use many of these Oz sequels to introduce entirely new casts of characters who live in entirely new lands, "just over the mountains" or "just past the desert" of Oz itself. By the end of the original 14 books, in fact, Baum had built up a virtual aristocracy of licensable characters, all of whom would have to be dragged out for a cameo at some point in each book to remind the audience of their existence -- not just the cast of the original book and '39 movie but also various other princesses like Ozma and Betsy Bobbin, boy characters like Ojo the Unlucky and Button Bright, adults who help them like the Shaggy Man, Cap'n Bill and Ugu the Shoemaker, and of course a whole litany of quirky fantastical sidekicks, including but not limited to Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Great Jinjin, Billina the Angry Hen, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, and Polychrome the Rainbow Fairy. Whew! And so did the Great Oz Merchandising Experiment keep limping along for two decades, with each sequel selling less and less and getting lazier and lazier (for example, the tenth book in the series, 1916's Rinkitink in Oz, was actually a non-Oz book written a decade previous, published almost unchanged except for a hasty final chapter full of Oz regulars slapped onto the end); and thus did Baum's bad luck in business come back with a vengeance as well, with three more Broadway productions that were all flops, and even the establishment of a film production company in 1914 that eventually went bankrupt.You can see the progression of all this reflected in Baum's first-person introductions to each book, which like I said is why they might be the most fascinating parts of all for adult readers -- how in the first sequel, for example, he expresses legitimately gleeful surprise and joy at how passionate his fans were, and how thousands of children had literally written to him out of the blue demanding more Oz stories, while with each subsequent sequel his tone becomes more and more snarky, ala "Well, dear and wonderful children, you've yet again demanded another Oz book like the sheep you are, so here it is, you screeching little monsters." In fact, in book six of the series, 1910's The Emerald City of Oz, Baum flat-out states that it's going to be the very last Oz book, and it's no coincidence that many fans actually consider this one to be the best of the original fourteen, because of Baum's extra attention to and enthusiasm for this particular storyline, thinking as he erroneously did that it would be the grand finale of the entire Oz universe; but after his later financial failures forced him back into the Oz business again, the gloves finally come off in his introductions, with most of the rest sounding to today's ears something like, "Well, okay, here again is the sugary teat you all apparently can't get enough of suckling, you infuriating little animals, so open wide and take your medicine." Now, of course, you shouldn't feel too bad for Baum; by the last years of his life, his combined books and plays were generating for him in today's terms roughly a quarter-million dollars a year just in personal royalties.So all in all, an experience I'm glad I had, reading all fourteen original Oz books in a row, but not something I'd recommend to others; instead, maybe better just to read the first, then skip to the sixth, then skip straight to the 14th, 1920's Glinda of Oz, because of its unusual darkness (probably caused, many scholars agree, by Baum knowing that he was near death). As with many authors I've looked at here at CCLaP, history seems to have correctly adjusted itself in Baum's case, with most of his books now rightfully falling into the obscurity they deserve, even while his one true masterpiece is still rightfully recognized as such.

The book showed resemblance to 'Narnia' and 'Alice in Wonderland' but for younger readers. It was quick and very imaginative. A lot of lessons can be learned from the book. I wished there more action :) and the a slower pacing.

One of my favourites! I just recently finished reading this (again), but this time to my 6yob. If you've only seen the movie, be warned, the book is very different. The whole wicked witch story comprises only one chapter of this book.

The first time I read this book, I was 25 years old, and picked up the annotated Centennial Edition from the library. I really enjoyed it, but it must have been just too much information to retain because when I listened to it with my kids this week, there was a shocking number of details that I didn't recall at all.

The thing that stood out the most to me when I read it the first time was the Scarecrow's wise and witty sayings, one of which we had posted up on our refrigerator for years (I can't remember the exact quote; something about how most people who have brains don't use them).

I didn't pick out much of anything of note from the Scarecrow this time around, but I did notice 46 beheadings (although two of those weren't fatal) and one neck-wringing.

L. Frank Baum's introduction to the novel talked about how it was intended to be just a fun story for children without all of the scary moralizing of older fairy tales. From this I suppose I can conclude that Baum thought beheadings were really awesome things that kids would love.

And actually, he might have been right. My kids adored this story. I could tell by how much my four-year-old repeated back to me (and how quietly he sat listening without making annoying sounds or punching his sister) that he was really engrossed in the story. My nearly-nine-year-old daughter loved the story despite feeling annoyed at the treatment of the majority of the predatory animals in the story.

So, that makes me wonder...why did we like it? I think it was just because the story was so magical. Plus, I think the idea of being carried to a foreign land in a flying house, being praised for something you didn't intend to do (and then expected to repeat the feat), and then spending the rest of the story trying to get back home again must really appeal to kids. Or at least to my kids. It gives me hope that even if I'm as drab and undemonstrative as Em and Henry, my kids will still want to come home.

A treasure of American Literature.

Why have I never read this book before?! Okay, I'll tell you why I've never read this book before - I HATE the movie. There, I said it. Get the lashings over with now, because I doubt I'll be changing my mind any time soon. The music! The stupid man in a lion costume! The wrong-coloured shoes! No no no. So, as you might imagine, it was a very pleasant surprise when I found myself, twenty pages into the book, sitting with a gentle smile on my face thinking, "Yeah, just one more chapter before I go do something useful." This is actually a really lovely little book! It is charming and whimsical and full of polite conversation and intriguing creatures, just as a children's classic should be. As Dorothy and her friends wend their merry way towards self-knowledge and magical wish fulfillment, they meet with all kinds of nice people, bizarre monsters and tricky situations, but you know that everything's going to be okay in the end because Baum said so. That said, it's not all sunshine and roses in the Land of Oz, oh no... What Baum omits by way of serious peril for his leading characters, he makes up for with the macabre ends he concocts for the naughty beasts that threaten them. Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West is destroyed with a humble bucket of water (if that's a spoiler... well, if you don't know it now you never will) - but everything else is thrown off a cliff, has its neck broken, is beheaded or chopped in half by the Tin Man's axe. All the kinds of deaths that make me shudder and put down my lunch for a moment. But then everybody skips on and is very jolly to have survived another menace, so that's okay.Needless to say, the book was a wonderful little read, despite the fact that I had "We're off to see the wizard" stuck in my head THE WHOLE TIME. Baum's imaginary world was a delight to explore, twisting old fairytale cliches into something new and unique (like the mischievous Winged Monkeys and their three wishes taking the place of the traditional genie, for example), and Dorothy's well-mannered sweetness was like a soothing balm for my summer-holiday-brat-frazzled nerves. My edition is a smart little 'Great Reads' hardback, with cute cartoony line drawings that don't look AT ALL like the movie characters (much to their credit), which I found really rounded off the reading experience. Roll on book 2 - I think I'm hooked!

This is one of those reviews I feel ridiculous writing because who doesn't know the story of The Wizard of Oz? Dorothy is a child living in a one-room house in Kansas with her aunt, uncle and dog. A tornado rips through the plains but before Dorothy and her little dog can make it to the hole in the floor the tiny house is swooped up in the tornado's vortex and they are whisked off to a fantasy land. Upon landing they inadvertently kill a wicked witch (of the East). The townspeople munchkins are overjoyed but all Dorothy wants to do is go home. So, the munchkins give her the witch's shoes and send her along a yellow brick road. At the end of the road is a wizard who supposedly can help her get back to Kansas. Along her journey she meets some oddball characters (a tin woodsman, a cowardly lion, and a brainless scarecrow). Unbeknownst to them, they are being watched on their journey. The deceased witch's sister (Wicked Witch of the West) wants the shoes given to Dorothy. To read The Wizard of Oz as an adult is 100% entertainment. I had fun taking note of how many times the brains-needing Scarecrow did something exceedingly smart or the Cowardly Lion acted inherently brave or the no-heart Tin Man felt true compassion. Other amusements: the group discussing heart disease.

For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. The Wizard of Oz is an iconic motion picture, from a children’s book written by L. Frank Baum. Everyone should be familiar with the movie, and while the book is obviously very similar, it contains quite a bit of extra material as well as a few major differences. For example, in the book, Dorothy does not wear ruby red slippers, but silver shoes instead.This book is an excellent beginner book for young readers, though there is perhaps more violence than some may consider appropriate for very young children. Highly recommended.

Think I read bits of this as a kid, but not the whole thing. Nice. The audio voices are rather odd, but bearable. Won't be re-reading it again all that soon, and not sure I liked it enough to justify reading the rest of the series. Hmmm.

I enjoyed reading about the characters that have become so familiar to us.

Lots of fun! I the book has some differences to the show. Baum is a clever writer

The wizard of OZ, Exceptional, best book ever, i also found the book more exciting than the movie, there is no better way to pass time with your daughter than reading this book, I have always been a fan of the film, only recently I read the book for the first time. Due to starting work in a library, I have read many books over the Christmas period why so many reviews from me so soon, I find it hard to understand anybody that does not love the Wizard of OZ theme, for me personally it is the greatest story of them all. Five star forever!

This book is the kind of book you could simply start reading again right after you've finished.

I loved reading this as a kid! Even now I like to read it.

I found it difficult to read this without the ghosts of the MGM musical and Gregory Maguire's [book: Wicked] and [book: Son of a Witch] lurking over my shoulder.Definitely liked it more than the musical -- no offense to Judy Garland. Dorothy's comrades are much more interesting in the original, especially little Toto.***August 2008 selection of the GB Book Club.***

It was fun to read this in French, though I found the illustrations somewhat off-putting. (I can't even find the proper adjective to describe them -- my wife suggests the word triangular, though we agree it doesn't quite capture the bizarreness.) I also thought asking the reader to wear green-tinted glasses during the City of Oz sections was a little much. Still a good way to practice my French.

The Wizard of Oz, popular abbreviation for the originally titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum originally published in 1900. The story follows the adventures of a girl named Dorothy in the Land of Oz. Thanks in part to the 1939 movie based on the book, it has become entrenched in American popular culture and led to Baum writing thirteen more Oz books.

This is a fantastic children’s book that follows Dorothy and friends through Oz. Although, I never read it as a child (I wish I had shared this with my daughter), I enjoyed it. It is nothing like the classic motion picture (let alone who knows what the new Disney movie has in store). If one is a fan of the film, they may be disappointed by the differences. Haven’t seen the film in its entirety in years, I was able to enjoy the book for what it was. The illustrations by Michael Sieben were, at first, a little disturbing but adds some pizzazz to the story. I see that Sieben is somewhat popular and his illustrations remind me of the wood block prints we used to do in school.

Oh my gosh! I loved this movie as a kid and I loved the book as a child too, both for different reasons. Reading this book again as an adult, it brought back wonderful memories of my Grandma and I reading this together when I was a child. How could any reader, young or old, not like this book?! This wonderful classic takes the reader on a wonderful journey to far away lands full of magic and wonder. With a wonderful plot and such classically wonderful characters this is an instant love for any reader. The wonder of the plot of being swept away to a far away land and trying to find a way home is great for the imagination. The characters only add to that love and wonder. With characters like Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, Dorothy, Toto, the witches (good and bad), and the wizard there is a character for each and every reader to love and to dislike. The pictures are perfect in this book as is the writing. It's a book so fantastic and magical any reader gets lost in the pages and before they know it, the end of the book is upon them. A great book to create great memories with!!5/5 Stars!!

A children’s novel written by L. Frank Baum is more familiar to me as the movie so it was one time where the book didn’t feel right compared to the movie. It was first made into film in 1939. We all know the story. Dorothy, a young girl, living with her aunt and uncle in Kansas is swept away in a tornado and finds herself in a land populated by witches, north, south, east and west and all sorts of different characters and animals. The author was an US born author. He was sheltered, shy and had a heart problem. He spent time with imaginary friends and reading books. He married a ‘women’s rights’ person and was considered a progressive thinking. His book has a female hero. The movie does follow the book fairly well. The shoes were silver and not red. There is considerable violence with the woodman chopping heads off here and there but unlike the movie I actually was able to finish the book. The movie was always too scary. I was born in the same town as Judy Garland and she played Dorothy of course, so that’s my claim to fame.

I really loved this book. It's a classic. Although, at times, I felt the movie was probably a bit better, but still a must-read. I thought the book was much more childlike than the movie and was much more in the perspective of a child.

I began reading this version of The Wizard of Oz to my youngest daughter, who is six years old, thinking that it may frighten her a bit, but in reality, this version was beautifully done and far less frightening than the movie version of this classic. In it, the characters are almost all seen as friendly and not at all intimidating or frightening. The residents of the land that Dorothy travels to on her way to Oz are small, cheerful characters who welcome Dorothy with open arms. When Dorothy finally reaches Oz, she is very well received, treated almost like a princess, and comes face to face with the Great Oz, who quickly shows himself to be just an ordinary man. This version would be wonderful to use as a read aloud or to the young but independent reader as an introduction to this classic tale, and also encourages using one's imagination and the themes of friendship, confidence in one's strengths, pursuing one's dreams, and the triumph of good over evil.

This book would be good to use when talking about fantasy. I think students will like this because of the adventure the main character goes on.