Dorothy has a dog who has a run-in with a neighbor and pretty quickly a tornado comes streaking toward the farm and the real story begins to unfold. If there is any way you don’t know, The Wizard of Oz is about Dorothy, a turn-of-the-nineteenth-to-twentieth-century teenager who lives with her aunt and uncle on a farm in the middle of absolutely nowhere Kansas. It might have had everything to do with the politics of the 1890s (publishing in 1900), but even though Baum was a political activist, it’s not the allegory that really shines here (like in Animal Farm). At any rate, it is often read as an allegory to either Populism or Jungian psychology, or whatever. Perhaps the issue was with the people of the 60s.
That’s what The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is, isn’t it? A trip into the imagination? A slightly psychedelic transportation with a simple story and a little bit outdated writing style? Well, it’s also political, which always makes me want to avoid a book, or at least we all started thinking so in the 60s, which is a time period I find many older books were suddenly found out to be an allegory. It inspired me, awoke my creativity, and that’s not half-bad, for a reading experience.
I’ll tell you what this book mostly did for me: it made me want to draw and paint, to do art.
They get decent reviews on Goodreads, all the way through, though it seems most people would have been happy to stop at the first one or two. (I read the Gregory Maguire series some time ago, including the book that became the runaway Broadway hit, Wicked.) Perhaps just the first and second one? I’d be curious to hear what someone would say who had read them all. With their amazing retro covers and illustrations (if you can find a copy that way), the series is alluring, but I’m pretty sure I’m happy with just the first, classic story and the many adaptations and cultural references.
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