154 pages
English language
Published Jan. 14, 1995
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a tornado. Upon her arrival in Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.The book was first published in the United States in May 1900 by the George M. Hill Company. In January 1901, the publishing company completed printing the first edition, a total of 10,000 copies, which quickly sold out. It had sold three million copies by the time it entered the public domain in 1956. It was often reprinted under the title The Wizard of Oz, which is the …
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a tornado. Upon her arrival in Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.The book was first published in the United States in May 1900 by the George M. Hill Company. In January 1901, the publishing company completed printing the first edition, a total of 10,000 copies, which quickly sold out. It had sold three million copies by the time it entered the public domain in 1956. It was often reprinted under the title The Wizard of Oz, which is the title of the successful 1902 Broadway musical adaptation as well as the classic 1939 live-action film.The ground-breaking success of both the original 1900 novel and the 1902 Broadway musical prompted Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books which serve as official sequels to the first story. Over a century later, the book is one of the best-known stories in American literature, and the Library of Congress has declared the work to be "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale."
A colourful little jaunt consisting of a series of slightly ludicrous and easily overcome obstacles.
downtosleep.podbean.com/e/the-wizard-of-oz-complete-audiobook-down-to-sleep-51/
Reminds me of my reaction to "Raiders of the Lost Arc", a movie I didn't like at all. The larger reasons I didn't like that aren't relevant, but one of the most annoying things about it was that every line in the movie had been parodied to death such that the delivery of the lines in the parodies was better than they were in the inceptive movie. With "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", this is also true... but the lines were way better in the film adaptation, which is incredible. There are certain creative flourishes here and there in the book that couldn't have made it into the film, but the overall package can't help but pale in comparison to its essentially perfect adaptation. So it's a bit underwhelming, but still quite nice.
I do not have much to say about the Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed it in the beginning but the endless repetitions got quite boring after a while.
I think as a kid you do like this book, however the simple language is irritating. It's fine to read I guess, but better suited forwards children
Until listening to this audiobook, all of my Wizard of Oz memories came from the 1939 film. I was expecting there to be a well constructed plot in the book, but I found each chapter annoyingly disconnected from the rest of the book. That being said, I wouldn't hesitate to grab one of the original Denslow-illustrated storybooks to read to any child.
(I found this "wonderfully" narrated version on iTunes podcasts for free.)
I once saw an obscure movie-musical with this title but only many years later did I discover that it was an adaptation of a famous children's book. I decided to find out if, like so many other movie-from-book adaptations, the book was the superior work. It turned out that, indeed, the film was much the weaker of the two. Here's why:
The story is action-packed where-as the film is quite dull. The story has only one person sing one song, where-as the film has numerous pointless song-and-dance sequences involving heaps of folks. Toto is cuter in the illustrations than in the film (especially when he has to wear green-tinted glasses).
I was most astonished by Dorothy's remarkable talent for accidentally destroying Wicked Witches - she wipes out the entire population in Oz. Which leads to a really strange aspect of the book. The Land of Oz does not really conform …
I once saw an obscure movie-musical with this title but only many years later did I discover that it was an adaptation of a famous children's book. I decided to find out if, like so many other movie-from-book adaptations, the book was the superior work. It turned out that, indeed, the film was much the weaker of the two. Here's why:
The story is action-packed where-as the film is quite dull. The story has only one person sing one song, where-as the film has numerous pointless song-and-dance sequences involving heaps of folks. Toto is cuter in the illustrations than in the film (especially when he has to wear green-tinted glasses).
I was most astonished by Dorothy's remarkable talent for accidentally destroying Wicked Witches - she wipes out the entire population in Oz. Which leads to a really strange aspect of the book. The Land of Oz does not really conform to my knowledge of it. I mean, I've never been there, but Baum describes it as a cultivatable land surrounded by a desert, where-as I'm fairly confident that actually the desert is in the centre and the cultivatable land surrounds it! Also, Baum describes various strange folk and even stranger animals. Now, I know there are Aboriginies in Oz, but they seem to be physically and mentally normal folks, rather than being made of, say, china, tin or straw. Also, the strange animals Baum describes seem to bear no relation to the marsupials I've seen in documentaries. Perhaps Baum should have done some research first? Also, it seems entirely preposterous that a cyclone could transport an entire house from Kansas all the way across the Pacific.
Despite all these freaky, unbelievable and inaccurate elements to the story, The Wizard of Oz is an amusing tale - though not really living up to its fame or deserving of even a very bad film adaptation.
