Review: The Royal Book of Oz

First of all, this book, in most forms, is credited to L. Frank Baum, but this is not merely misleading, but completely incorrect: The Royal Book of Oz was written by Thompson after Baum's death. This is what I've read in many places, and certain newer versions of the book do properly credit the real author, but even without having been told nothing could have been more obvious than Baum's absence upon reading the book. If the writing style alone hadn't been a dead giveaway, then the characters having gone through complete personality changes probably would have done the trick. Ozma as cross? Dorothy as annoyed? The Wogglebug as rude and haughty? Though there were hints of their former selves, these were not the characters that we'd come to know and love, a change that was our biggest disappointment. And this was not the smooth and enchanting writing style to which we had become accustomed, either. Though Thompson does include some witty remarks and word play that will be enjoyable to older readers, some of her sentence formation—especially around the speaking of characters—is on the complex side for younger readers to follow. This is a far cry from Baum who, though writing at the turn of the century and with a style did reflect this, was still accessible for the younger set. And you might be tempted to wonder if the book would have been better were I treating it as its own thing, but first, she didn't write it as its own thing—she even published it under Baum's name!—and second, her style is choppy even when held up entirely on its own. This book was a huge disappointment to me, and though Calvin said he enjoyed it fine, for the first time Calvin he not asked me to get the next Oz book "right away", so I think we'll be taking checking out a new series for now.

Review: The Magic of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

The penultimate book in the series as written by Baum. If there weren't another twenty-some more books widely considered as part of the Oz canon I think I would be very sad. As it is, I think I still am. I think it's possible to make these books feel fresh and new, even twelve books into the series, because anything, and I mean anything, can happen in Oz, so there are no contraints, natural or artificial, binding the author's creativity. Of course the plot line doesn't change all that much from book to book—there's only a handful of those to choose from here—but the intriguing and unique characters that fill in the bare bones of the plots are what make the books enjoyable one right after the other. The Magic of Oz is another winner for me, full of just enough adult-size humor to give depth to the child's fairy story. This is children's fantasy at its best.

Review: The Tin Woodman of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

There are only two more books, after this one, left in the Oz series as written by Baum, and I am sad to see the end so obviously in sight. While there are yet another 26 books in what is considered the Oz canon, I am a sentimentalist, and it will be hard, and a little nerve wracking, to break into the Oz world as imagined by other authors. I am hoping that, if so many other Ozites consider these other books to be canon, we will be just as happy with them as we have been with Baum's vision, and certainly there are far more than 26 other Oz books out there, so selectivity did come into play. My fingers are crossed and my breath held as we near the end of Baum's road, though.

The Tin Woodman of Oz, though, was also a slight variation from Baum's usual, and I've heard that this, and the last two books in the series, are dark by comparison to his previous books of wonder. In the Tin Woodman, in fact, the reader is reminded of the Tin Woodman's somewhat gruesome past, and also meets his severed head, on the tinsmith's shelf, and many of his former body parts, now glued back together to create a different being. And, if these anomolies are not enough, there is definitely a thinly veiled question here about makeup of a soul, and the value of a body. Which, after all, is the real Tin Woodman, Nick Chopper? Is it the head, with the brain, the body, with the heart, or the new tin creation, with the memories, the creature we have all become accustomed to? There is really a lot of symbolism and imagery in all of Baum's work, much of it being politically motivated by the situations of the early 20th century, but this is perhaps the most striking, and the most demanding, of them all.

For all of that, however, much of this is naturally over a four-year-old's head, and since I did not see fit to draw attention to these complex themes, although I'm sure we could have discussed them, Calvin enjoyed this book as he has all the others: deeply and with great excitement.

Review: Tik-Tok of OZ, by L. Frank Baum

We finished our most recent in the Oz series yesterday, The Tik-Tok of Oz. I have to say that this was my least favorite of the series so far. It fits in just fine, but it borrowed heavily from previous books, to the point that I felt it was just a rewriting or a recombination of earlier stories he'd already written. That being said, all the stories are really formulaic and that might be part of what makes them so enjoyable to the younger set—they know what to expect, and they are all equally fantastical and enjoyable. Calvin, for one, was not bothered by repetition.

Since I thought the book was somewhat of a bust I think my favorite part is Calvin's journal entry. When we started with this half a year ago I was spelling everything for him and still helping him form letters and the sentence structure to get his ideas out. He wrote this entry entirely by himself while I was running on the treadmill. I am completely in love with it.

More on our Oz journey can be found on our homeschooling blog under the tag Oz