Reviews - The Wizard of Oz

6.1k reviews for:

The Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum

3.84 AVERAGE

nina_the_reader's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

strangeeigenfunction's review against another edition

On the whole I liked more than I disliked about Hearn's annotations.

He gives a refreshingly appropriate amount of credit to that one perennially brought up monetarist view of Oz: very little! (except iirc there is one annotation where Hearn credits one particular insight as plausible)

As a former teen Oz buff but latecomer to the Judy Garland movie and someone who doesn't ...like certain adaptational choices there, I also appreciated that Hearn doesn't adulate the movie here.

Personally I enjoyed the fact that the annotations kept bringing up stuff in the Russian "translation" (it would seem adaptationally akin to but less extreme than the Icelandic "Dracula") though I suppose ymmv.

I do have reason to suspect some of the witch related annotations involve ahistorical ideas about the eras of witch hunts, although the fact that Victorians/Edwardians, including Gage, with an eye toward feminist revisionism drew those conclusions is certainly relevant to Baum's outlook.

If I remember correctly, I think there's also an inaccuracy in the annotation describing gingham but I am a fiber crafts nerd and cannot realistically expect everyone to share my knowledge there (ala the xkcd about geologists... anyway, I didn't feel like it was as clueless a description as some very minor craft details in Wicked ).