The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum, adapted by Eric Shanower

This artwork makes me drool in happiness. That is all.
No, seriously, I don't have a lot to say. You can read my review/summary of the plot at my entry for the book, here.
Whether or not you've read Baum's book, I recommend the version adapted by Shanower and illustrated by Skottie Young. I've read the book, obviously, so I knew what was going to happen--which didn't make the illustrations any less delightful. In fact perhaps it made them better, since I was so eagerly anticipating Young's version of all the characters.
And if you haven't read The Marvelous Land of Oz, the graphic novels leave nothing to be desired. The story is the same, and although the text is abbreviated I hesitate to go so far as to call them abridged, as the entirety of the story is presented in the graphic novel form. These are just gorgeous, gorgeous versions of the Oz stories, and I can't wait for the next one to come out.

Read these!

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Although everyone I know knows the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and many people in my acquaintance have even read the original book, the numbers decrease significantly when I ask who's read any beyond the first book. With that in mind, I thought I'd take a day each month to highlight one of the Oz books, giving a small summary and some general information.

And now, Book 3:

Ozma of Oz -- OR -- How Not To Implement Foreign Policy

Magical Characters Introduced:

Tik-Tok

Other Introductions:

Billina the Hen

The Hungry Tiger

Old Friends:

Dorothy Gale

Uncle Henry

Ozma

Scarecrow

Tin Woodman

Cowardly Lion

Antagonists:

Princess Langwidere

The Nome King

Magical Treasures of Oz:

The Nome King's Magical Belt

Dorothy returns to Oz in the third installation of Oz. Uncle Henry has been sent, by his doctor, to the fresh air of Australia, until he can recuperate from his illness. On the journey they are caught in a storm, and naturally Dorothy is whisked away to a fairy country.

She ends up in Ev, along with a yellow hen named Bill, who she renames Billina for the sake of gender clarity. Billina and Dorothy explore the land of Ev until they run into the Wheelers, a rowdy bunch with wheels instead of hands and feet. The Wheelers chase Dorothy and Billina up a rocky mountain (where they can't follow, with their wheels on the rough terrain), which is a nice bit of felix culpa, as they find a chamber at the top of the mountain, in which they discover Tik-Tok.

Tik-Tok, after being wound up (the first robot in fiction!), points out that the Wheelers are essentially harmless because they have no way to hurt the adventurers, needing to keep their wheels on the ground as they do. Tik-Tok also tells Dorothy and Billina about the Royal Family of Ev, who have been traded to the Nome King in return for a long life for the King of Ev. Who then regretted his actions and drowned himself. Thereby wasting the whole deal.

Dorothy decides to try to help the Royal Family, since she's here and she's got nothing else going on. She travels to the royal residence, where she meets Princess Langwidere, who likes to change heads so that she doesn't get bored. They get along well enough until the Princess decides she needs Dorothy's head for her collection, and locks her up in a tower until she's willing to cooperate.

Fortunately for Dorothy, in the midst of all this, it turns out that Ozma is on her way to Ev, also intent on helping the Royal Family. She talks Langwidere out of keeping Dorothy in captivity, and Dorothy is reunited with the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, who have accompanied Ozma across the desert on a magic carpet provided by Glinda.

Also in Ozma's company are the Hungry Tiger (always hungry but too conscientious to eat what he really wants), and the Royal Army, which is almost all officers with one Private for them to order around. And the Saw Horse is along for the adventure, as well.

Ozma talks Langwidere out of collecting Dorothy's head, and explains her royal mission to free the family of Ev. Langwidere is delighted to hear this because she's tired of the 15 minutes or so a day that she has to spend actually ruling, so she'd like to pass that responsibility off to someone else, and have more time to play with her heads.

So Dorothy, Billina, and Tik-Tok join up with Ozma and company, and they set out for the mountains to talk with the Nome King. They reach his domain with the help of the Lion and Tiger, who safely see the travelers through the giant stomping machine in their pathway by dashing along the path before it can smash them.

The Nome King seems friendly enough, and after revealing that the family have all been turned into ornaments around his palace, agrees to let Ozma and her company guess which ornaments they are. If they succeed, the family goes free. If not, the adventurers get added to the collection.

Everyone fails until Dorothy manages to free the youngest son of Ev, winning her own freedom but not saving anyone else.

Fortunately, in the midst of all the guessing, Billina slips under the Nome King's throne, and overhears him telling his advisor that all the Ev ornaments are purple, and that he's been turning all the Oz ornaments green. After she lays an egg she infuriates the Nome King, because it turns out that eggs are poison to Nomes. (Remember: never travel into Nome territory without a laying hen.) Billina only agrees to remove the egg after the Nome King allows her to have a chance to guess which ornaments are her peeps. Her people, that is, not her baby chicks.

Naturally, Billina guesses correctly, freeing everyone and further angering the Nome King, who calls out his army instead of letting them go as he said he would. While the Private attacks the entire Nome army, the Scarecrow throws Billina's eggs at the Nome King, temporarily blinding him with an egg in each eye. Dorothy runs up and gets the magic belt he uses to perform his transformations, and he calls off his army in favor of getting the egg out of his eye.

Dorothy, Ozma, and crew escape by turning a bunch of the army into eggs. With all the eggs on the ground, the Nome army doesn't dare follow them. (I am not making this up. Baum already did.)

Once the Royal Family has been restored to Ev, Ozma, Dorothy, and the rest return to Oz, where Ozma declares Dorothy an official Princess of Oz. (Once a Prince or Princess of Oz---no wait, that's another magical world.)

Dorothy gives Ozma the magical belt, which Ozma uses to wish Dorothy back to Uncle Henry. She promises to check on Dorothy every once in a while, to see if Dorothy wants to visit. And thus Dorothy becomes the first Ambassador... or something.

This third installation in the series seems to have a more normal narrative flow, in that the first two seem to climax in the middle and then have a long conclusion. This one definitely to the end, making it, I think, a faster read. Of course I enjoyed it, and I recommend again the HarperCollins Books of Wonder replica edition, with the Neill illustrations.

The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Although everyone I know knows the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and many people in my acquaintance have even read the original book, the numbers decrease significantly when I ask who's read any beyond the first book. With that in mind, I thought I'd take a day each month to highlight one of the Oz books, giving a small summary and some general information.

With that in mind, I bring you:

The Marvelous Land of Oz -- OR -- The Gender Wars of Oz, as I've come to think of Book 2.

Marvelous Land of Oz

Magical Characters Introduced:

Jack Pumpkinhead

Saw-Horse

The Gump

Other Introductions:

Tip

Ozma of Oz

Thoroughly Educated Wogglebug

Old Friends:

Scarecrow

Tin Woodman

Glinda the Good

Antagonists:

General Jinjur

Mombi the Witch

Magical Treasures of Oz:

Powder of Life

Wishing Pills

Baum's first trip back to Oz revolved around a little boy named Tip who is the servant of the witch, Mombi. She falls into the bad witch category, and Tip takes a chance to scare her with his invention, Jack Pumpkinhead, as she's returning home. She isn't fooled, however, and uses the stick-and-pumpkin man to test her newly acquired Powder of Life, bringing Jack to life. Then she tells Tip that she'll turn him into a marble statue as revenge for trying to scare her, which is just crossing a line. So Tip and Jack Pumpkinhead steal the Powder of Life, that night, and run away.

In the process they bring the Saw-Horse to life for Jack to ride, since his wooden joints are wearing out with the walking.

The companions then run into General Jinjur and her All Girl Army, who are all about Girl Power and are invading the Emerald City to take over from the Scarecrow, who has ruled there since the Wizard's departure.

The Girl Power Army takes over Oz with a minimum of trouble, in spite of Tip, Jack, and the Saw-Horse joining up with the Scarecrow. They escape by creating The Gump, a hodgepodge creature made from whatever the characters can gather and the Powder of Life. (You may remember the Gump if you saw the 1985 Return to Oz film, which borrowed heavily from books 2 and 3 of the Oz books, while still being its own (Disney) movie.)

The Gump flies the companions out to the middle of nowhere, where a run-in with some Jackdaws leaves them unable to travel any further. They discover that, along with the Powder of Life, they have some Wishing Pills, which they make use of to reach Glinda.

Glinda reveals that the rightful ruler of Oz is, in fact, a girl--have you guessed it yet? Ozma of Oz. Unfortunately nobody knows where Ozma is. Glinda only knows that Ozma was hidden by the Wizard some years ago, and has discovered that Mombi was probably involved.

So the whole crew head back to the Emerald City to confront Mombi. After some rigmarole, Mombi reveals that Ozma is in fact Tip, transformed as a baby.

Well, naturally, Tip is happy as a boy and doesn't want to be transformed back (gender issues, much?), but his companions convince him to accept his destiny and he allows Glinda to turn him back into Ozma, who leads her crew in a reconquering of the Emerald City, where she sets up housekeeping, as it were.

There you have it: Girls win. Booyah.

In spite of my somewhat slightly marginally sarcastic commentary, this is another fun romp, as imaginative and adventurous as Dorothy's first sojourn into Oz. I highly recommend HarperCollin's reproduction editions, with the original John Neill illustrations throughout. It's gorgeous and exact down to the typos.

Wizard of Oz Week: Robert Sabuda's Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Certainly one of the most abridged versions I've ever come across, Sabuda's commemorative pop-up, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is also one of the most fantastical and fascinating.

With intricate and detailed pop-ups, Sabuda tells the story of Dorothy's journey through Oz, starting with a full tornado.

The twister actually twists as you open the page, to give you an idea of the complexity and detail.

Also, when you get to the Emerald City, you get your own green glasses:

I've become a reborn pop-up fan through Sabuda's work, which includes retellings of several of my favorite fairy tales. His balloon page, in this Oz book, though, remains one of my favorites. This is an excellent one for collectors (although I'm not sure I'd want to let the kids tear it up...).

Wizard of Oz Week: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

I can hardly spend a week talking about Wizard of Oz retellings and not mention Wicked.

Both a bestselling novel and a Broadway hit, I'll probably meander back and forth through both, but I'll try to keep them distinct for the purposes of this blog.

So let's see--the book. The book is extremely dense and lyrically heavy. It's one of the harder things I've read. I don't come across many books any more that send me to the dictionary, much less more than once. And yet every time I looked up a word, it turned out to be the perfect word. I had to take a break in the middle of the book because my brain just needed to process for a while. (I think I read a couple picture books and then went back to it.)

The flow of the novel slows considerably at some points, and then picks up again so that I found myself whipping through pages, and then setting the book down to digest what I had read. It's an incredibly complex view of Oz, but it felt true in that: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a child's view of the world, as Dorothy wanders through a strange and magical (but, notably, uncivilized) land, running into characters who are caught up in the adult realities of a strange, magical, and uncivilized land. It's no surprise that a child would pick up on the danger of the land without understanding the political complexities.

Therefore, in Wicked, all those complicated adult interactions and motives and understandings are brought into the light, and Oz is still Dorothy's Oz, but with all the detail of differing factions and prejudice and policy.

I really did love it, in the end. And it's not until the last quarter of the book that Dorothy comes into the story at all, but I love. love. LOVE her scene with Elphaba.

But if you picked up the book and absolutely couldn't get through it--you still might love the musical!

I think the musical goes very well as a companion to the Judy Garland musical, as much as Wicked the book goes with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz book. The musical Wicked ties the ends together much more neatly, slaps a (not unearned) happy ending into place, and alludes both musically and thematically to the 1939 musical. Characters are conglomerated for an altogether tidier story (such as Boq being the Tin Woodman, separate characters in both books).

The musical focuses much more on Elphaba's friendship with Glinda (in the book they only see each other once in the second half of the story), with more emphasis on the love triangle, which is only mentioned as a possibility in the book.

For all their differences--and I am usually one to gripe about changes in adaptations--I love both versions. There is nothing careless in the Musical treatment; the changes feel justified. The book is like a complex person, or a country: nothing simple, but absolutely worthwhile.

I hope you'll take a chance on both of them.

Wizard of Oz Week: Tin Man

Tin Man is the SyFy (haha, that still cracks me up) retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It's quite different, and yet the bare bones of the story are still there, for the most part. The characters transpose into their new parts in interesting ways.

My husband got really impatient with D.G. (Zooey Deschanel), I think mostly because we were watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the time, and he kept expecting the butt-kicking to commence. (I wonder if he'd like it more now that we're Doctor Who marathoning?) The pacing is definitely slower in this one, as D.G.'s yellow brick quest is drawn out into 3 hour-and-a-half parts.

Overall, I enjoyed the reinterpretation, and learning the truth about the Wicked Witch in the slow reveal. It's worth checking out if you're an Oz fan, although I'd recommend blanking your expectations-slate as much as possible.

You can play around in the SyFy Channel's special feature zone if you're interested.

Wizard of Oz Week: The Muppet's Wizard of Oz

I rented The Muppet's Wizard of Oz, and I liked most of the music, although some of it was a little too much the kind of pop sound that mostly doesn't appeal to me. For some reason, this just struck me as strange:

Maybe because it was right at the beginning (the song, not the music video) and I hadn't really had a chance to get used to the way things were going. I did like most of the other music, although I didn't really feel like Ashanti was one of those singers who should try to branch out into acting.

I did like most of the casting, both the humans and the Muppets. Really, I can't think of any way they could have arranged the Muppets to be better matches. And I will say, overall, they stuck to the book better than the Judy Garland movie, aside from modernizing Dorothy's home and the non-Oz stuff. I really liked that it was never implied that she just bumped her head and had a crazy dream, which both the Judy Garland version and the Return to Oz movie do.

I think I might have missed out on something from not being younger or from expecting something, but in the end, Quentin Tarantino's cameo was my favorite part of the whole show.

Wizard of Oz Week: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Marvel Classics

Yes, the picture needs to be that big. Because that is how much I love this version of L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It is simply gorgeous.

The artwork is stunning and rich. This is one of the first versions I've read that actually made me want to go to Oz, so I could see in person what I was reading about.

As far as adaptations and twists go, this is not a retelling; it sticks very closely to the original story. I didn't pull out my original Oz book to check, but I don't think it's even abridged. Certainly everything I remembered reading was in the graphic novel, including the ending to the original story: the quest to read Glinda in the south of Oz, with the Hammer-Heads and the China doll village.

It's great to see the visualization of Baum's imagination (as it is often left out of movie versions; Dorothy's return from the Wicked Witch of the West is usually considered to be enough story.)

But it keeps going. That's right. And Eric Shanower and Skottie Young do the whole story justice.

I am certainly looking forward to their second installment, as they continue Baum's story with The Marvelous Land of Oz, which was released on October 30th.

Silver Shoes by Paul Miles Schneider

I really wanted to like Silver Shoes a lot more than I ended up liking it. Not to say it's terrible, but, well. I did like the premise very much: What happens to the silver shoes that Dorothy loses in her flight back to Kansas? The young adult novel starts out well enough, with Donny's mother purchasing a strange silver shoe on the return from their vacation to visit family in Kansas. It's clear right away that the shoe is not just a lovely piece of silversmithing, but also an extraordinary and strange thing.

For the first half of the novel, I was into it. The writing is not the strongest I've read but aimed at younger children, so it wasn't too distracting. I wanted to see how all the elements would tie into the Oz mythology.

Then some point around the half-way mark of the book the plot seemed less structured. Elements like Donny's mother's despair and the constant running and hiding began to bother me. The end of the book was a disappointment, as it became clear that certain parts of the story would not be explained (the identity of the strange woman who sold them the shoe) and other things would be drawn out for a possible sequel (the sorcerer being stranded in our world).

So: for its own sake, I thought the novel was on the weaker side. As an added bit of Oz world, there are some creative and interesting ideas here--I liked the bits about L. Frank Baum. On the other hand, I didn't like the idea that the silver shoes themselves were malevolent. Some good and some bad here. Worth reading if you're very into Oz and looking for something new, but otherwise you might pass this one.

The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan

Matt Phelan is one of my favorite illustrators, so when he announced the publication of his first graphic novel, The Storm in the Barn, I was, to say the least, very excited to see it.

Set in the Kansas Dust Bowl years, this story weaves together history and mythology, borrowing from tall tales as well as straightforward historical accounts of the time and place. 11-year-old Jack has grown up in a world without rain, and is struggling with his family and classmates as much as the weather. His sister Dorothy is ill, but finds moments to comfort him with tales of "the other Dorothy," as the children read through the Oz books. In the end, Jack must find a way to save his family and their land before they lose hope entirely.

You can get a good idea of the set up of the story, the mood, and the artwork of the book from this book trailer (book trailer yay!):