by L. Frank Baum, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn
After reading Gregory Maguire’s version of Oz in Wicked and Son of a Witch, I felt I needed to return to the original, which I hadn’t read before. Like many of us, my entire knowledge of the story is from the 1939 movie. I had purchased this centennial edition for my college’s children’s literature collection, and this was a great excuse to read it. The book incorporates facsimiles of Baum’s 1900 publication, including the original artwork by W. W. Denslow. Hearn has added extensive annotations to the text, as well as a 98-page introduction with background on the author and illustrator (and many relevant photographs and drawings). It’s a gorgeous book.
I learned, among other things, that the “ruby slippers” of the movie were actually “silver shoes” in the book (a detail that was correct in Wicked), and that the Tin Woodman was in fact the woodcutter upon whose ax Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose (aka the Wicked Witch of the East), casts an evil spell that resulted in his slowly but surely being turned into tin. Interestingly enough, in Wicked, Nessarose has no arms, an implication that she may be the product of her mother’s affair with the Quadling Turtle Heart. In the original Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends encounter the armless Hammer-Heads in Quadling country, near the end of the book, after Dorothy has killed the Wicked Witch of the West.
© Amanda Pape - 2007
[This book was borrowed from and returned to my university library.]
