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35) "Dorothy And The Wizard In Oz" --L Frank Baum
A rambling book with no particular climax and a ridiculously long denouement. Dorothy falls in a hole with Zeb (a farm boy), Eureka (a white kitten) and Jim the horse, who's pulling the buggy they're riding in. Adventures ensue. They just sort of continue moving from one odd fairy kingdom to another, in the center of the earthy, trying to climb out. And along the way they pick up The Wizard, who tells them another revisionist history.
So let me backtrack a bit. I'm not sure what was said about the royal family of Oz in the third book of the series, 'Ozma of Oz'. I know there was something, I wish I'd written it down at the time. In 'The Land of Oz' Glinda told us that The Wizard deposed Ozma's father from the throne of Oz and took baby Ozma and gave her to an evil witch to keep hidden. (And of course he had told them that he just wandered in and they made him their ruler spontaneously, but look who's telling the story.)
In this fourth book The Wizard now says that when he arrived from the sky his first two initials were painted on his balloon (O.Z.) and that convinced people he was a new ruler for them, so they spontaneously rose up against the evil witches who were ruling them at the time and pushed them back from the center of the country. Those witches were the ones who took Ozma's grandfather and father and hid them away, and Mombie (who was nobody in particular in 'The Land Of Oz') was the ruler of the North, but was later deposed by a Good Witch, and Glinda beat out the evil witch in the South. Should we put this down as 'learning more' and every person who tells the story gives their own understanding or their own spin?
The one thing that I think doesn't get changed was that the city of Oz didn't exist before the Wizard convinced the people to build it. And up until now everyone has worn the green glasses, if there was a chance to mention it, in the city... but then in this book when Zeb is transported to the city even the light is green, but nobody is mentioned as wearing any green glasses. I'm so confused!
There's other weird little inconsistencies, like the Tin Woodman saying that he's never eaten and doesn't have a frame of reference for the delight of tasting things. When of course in the first book he'd said he had been a normal meat person until he started chopping all his body parts off because of the ax being enchanted by the Wicked Witch of the East.
Okay, so this is a rambling post with no particular climax and not even a denouement. :) I've started book five, which I'd recalled as one of my favorites from when I was a kid, and am as charmed by The Shaggy Man as ever. The writing is just better. It feels as though he cranked a couple out, but was hitting his stride a little more in this book. Although I don't think the plotting is really all that improved - I know they're going to just wander through a lot of fairy countries and then wind up in Oz.
A rambling book with no particular climax and a ridiculously long denouement. Dorothy falls in a hole with Zeb (a farm boy), Eureka (a white kitten) and Jim the horse, who's pulling the buggy they're riding in. Adventures ensue. They just sort of continue moving from one odd fairy kingdom to another, in the center of the earthy, trying to climb out. And along the way they pick up The Wizard, who tells them another revisionist history.
So let me backtrack a bit. I'm not sure what was said about the royal family of Oz in the third book of the series, 'Ozma of Oz'. I know there was something, I wish I'd written it down at the time. In 'The Land of Oz' Glinda told us that The Wizard deposed Ozma's father from the throne of Oz and took baby Ozma and gave her to an evil witch to keep hidden. (And of course he had told them that he just wandered in and they made him their ruler spontaneously, but look who's telling the story.)
In this fourth book The Wizard now says that when he arrived from the sky his first two initials were painted on his balloon (O.Z.) and that convinced people he was a new ruler for them, so they spontaneously rose up against the evil witches who were ruling them at the time and pushed them back from the center of the country. Those witches were the ones who took Ozma's grandfather and father and hid them away, and Mombie (who was nobody in particular in 'The Land Of Oz') was the ruler of the North, but was later deposed by a Good Witch, and Glinda beat out the evil witch in the South. Should we put this down as 'learning more' and every person who tells the story gives their own understanding or their own spin?
The one thing that I think doesn't get changed was that the city of Oz didn't exist before the Wizard convinced the people to build it. And up until now everyone has worn the green glasses, if there was a chance to mention it, in the city... but then in this book when Zeb is transported to the city even the light is green, but nobody is mentioned as wearing any green glasses. I'm so confused!
There's other weird little inconsistencies, like the Tin Woodman saying that he's never eaten and doesn't have a frame of reference for the delight of tasting things. When of course in the first book he'd said he had been a normal meat person until he started chopping all his body parts off because of the ax being enchanted by the Wicked Witch of the East.
Okay, so this is a rambling post with no particular climax and not even a denouement. :) I've started book five, which I'd recalled as one of my favorites from when I was a kid, and am as charmed by The Shaggy Man as ever. The writing is just better. It feels as though he cranked a couple out, but was hitting his stride a little more in this book. Although I don't think the plotting is really all that improved - I know they're going to just wander through a lot of fairy countries and then wind up in Oz.