The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz, #1)

English language

ISBN:: 978-0-14-062167-9

(1 review)

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 …

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 additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story. In January 1901, George M. Hill Company completed printing the first edition, a total of 10,000 copies, which quickly sold out. It had sold three million copies by the time it entered the public domain in 1956.

6 editions

Graham Downs reviewed The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Oz, #1)

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 …

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 a boy or girl wanted to do xyz, then he would have to...."

Clearly, there used to be nothing strange about using "he" to refer to a singular person of any gender. I find that... interesting, because even I have adopted "they" for that purpose in my everyday speech.

One negative is that the edition I read, which I got from Everand, had some bad editing in it. I don't know if some of those issues were in the original printing, but at least some of them were clearly issues caused by bad OCR. Why can't people just proofread?

But don't let that detract from your enjoyment of the story. Once again, it's really good. It feels like a piece of history, a really nostalgic walk down memory lane, that puts me in mind of many of the children's stories I read as a child. It gave me the warm fuzzies!