The Wizard of Oz, part 2

It's time for part 2 of The Wizard of Oz! Now, it's been noted that what I'm doing here is not so much a review as it is a blow-by-blow synopsis. That's true, and I've been thinking about why that is. It seems a little silly to do a review telling people, "Read the book, it's good!" Of course it's good. Even if you haven't read the book, you've very likely seen the movie, and you know exactly what happens. I guess that's why I've had more fun in pointing out the differences between the book and the movie, no matter how small, and also looking at some of my favorite parts of Baum's writing, or the little plot points and character traits that will become important later in the series. Future reviews of Oz books won't be like that - a lot of people haven't read the rest of the series and don't know the story, and I'd hate to spoil it for you! So rest assured, most of my reviews won't be nearly this long.

When we left off, the Cowardly Lion was the last to join the group. Dorothy's new friends prove to be both useful and kind, helping her to forage for food and covering her with dry leaves to sleep at night. (I'm not convinced that this is an effective blanket, but it's a sweet gesture nevertheless.) The next day they encounter the first real obstacle to their journey, a deep ditch. They solve this problem by taking turns riding on the Lion's back as he leaps across. In the deep forest on the other side, they are on the lookout for dangerous forest beasts - not lions, tigers, and bears, but rather Kalidahs, fierce creatures with the head of a tiger and the body of a bear. I guess we know where that line in the movie came from, at least! They encounter another ditch, this one too wide for the Cowardly Lion to jump, so the Tin Woodman chops down a tree to create a makeshift bridge. Just as they cross, two Kalidahs come rushing out of the forest to attack. The Cowardly Lion turns and roars at them, which scares them and buys the others some time. They begin to attack again, but not before the Tin Woodman chops the tree and destroys the bridge.

This time, it's the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion who prove they already have wit and bravery. The Scarecrow was the one who figured out how to cross both of the ditches, and the Cowardly Lion, although he claims he's never been so terrified, was brave enough to protect the others from the Kalidahs. Baum never actually points this out, trusting in his readers to pick up on it. I've always appreciated it when the author of a children's book has enough faith in young readers not to spell everything out in detail. It's a classic example of the old writers' proverb, "Show, don't tell."

The next day they encounter more obstacles and find ways to pass them. This time, one of the obstacles is a familiar one - the field of poppies. This is not a magic field, supposedly, and was not put there by a witch:

Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers he sleeps on and on forever. But Dorothy did not know this, nor could she get away from the bright red flowers that were everywhere about; so presently her eyes grew heavy and she felt she must sit down to rest and to sleep.

The others try to keep Dorothy walking, but it doesn't work for long, and she falls asleep, as does Toto. The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman aren't affected, just as in the movie, but the Cowardly Lion is able to stay awake longer, and although he's fighting off sleepiness, he has the presence of mind to know he must get away. While he makes a run for it, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman make a chair from their arms and carry Dorothy out of the huge poppy field, then lay her down in a meadow until she wakes up. Unfortunately, the Cowardly Lion finally passed out a few feet away from the edge of the poppy field, and he's too heavy to carry, so they aren't sure what to do. Unlike the movie, this time there is no Glinda to send magical snow to wake him.

Just then they see a wildcat about to pounce on and kill a field mouse, so the Tin Woodman chops off the wildcat's head. It turns out he has rescued the Queen of the Field Mice, and she is very grateful. As thanks, she promises that she and her subjects will do anything the Tin Woodman asks. He requests their help in saving the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow comes up with yet another plan, asking the Queen Mouse to have her subjects fetch as many pieces of string as they can. Meanwhile, the Tin Woodman chops some nearby trees and makes a wooden cart to carry the Lion. They harness several thousand mice to the cart with the strings, then pull it over to the Cowardly Lion and manage to get him onto the cart. Once he has been pulled to safety, the mice depart, promising to come to their aid again if they are called. Once both Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion are awake, and they all continue on their way.

Just as in the movie, it's not long after escaping the poppy field that they come to the Emerald City. They know they are close when all the fences, houses, and clothing of the locals are green instead of blue. They stop at a house for food and rest, where the residents tell them more about the Wizard - that he never sees anyone, never leaves his throne room, and can take on any form he wishes. They assure them, however, that Oz can most certainly grant their wishes, if they can only find a way to get in to see him. They finally arrive at the gates to the Emerald City, and again we are in familiar territory. The Guardian of the Gates responds to the bell and greets them inside a room lined with emeralds. He is apparently about the same size as the Munchkins, although we don't know if others in the countryside around the Emerald City are the same height or taller. The Guardian of the Gates gives them all green spectacles:

"Because if you did not wear spectacles the brightness and glory of the Emerald City would blind you. Even those who live in the City must wear spectacles night and day. They are all locked on, for Oz so ordered it when the City was first built, and I have the only key that will unlock them."

Instead of temples over the ears, these spectacles are fastened by a golden band around the head that locks in the back - a bit more like goggles than glasses. Once the Guardian has found glasses that will fit each of them (no mean feat), he lets them on through into the city. The five are dazzled (including Toto, who also got spectacles to wear). It isn't quite the same as the art deco Emerald City from the movie, with all its smooth and gleaming, somewhat futuristic looking turrets, but Baum does describe everything in lovely detail. Apparently everything is completely green, down to the window panes, the sunbeams, the food, and the peoples' skin. The movie has a color-changing horse, but in the Emerald City such a horse would be only green - except that there apparently are no horses at all, something that comes up in later Oz books.

The travelers are given rooms in the palace and told that the Wizard will see them in the morning. Oz will only see them one at a time, however, so Dorothy goes in first. She sees what you might expect if you have seen the movie - a huge, hairless head floating above the emerald-studded throne. The conversation goes much as it does in the movie, occasionally word-for-word, and the Wizard will only send Dorothy back to Kansas if she kills the Wicked Witch of the West. The next day the Wizard sees the Scarecrow, and the conversation is much the same - he will give the Scarecrow brains in exchange for the Wicked Witch's life - but instead of a giant head, he appears this time as a beautiful, winged fairy woman dressed in green, with green hair and a jeweled crown. On the third day, the Tin Woodman is offered the same deal by a five-eyed, five-armed, five-legged, huge and hairy beast. Finally, the Cowardly Lion is seen by the Wizard on the fourth day. This time Oz appears as a giant ball of flame and tells the Lion the same thing he told the others. The lion runs from the room as he did in the movie, but driven as much by the heat from the flame as by fear.

The travelers are not eager, but they decide they have no choice but to go in search of the Wicked Witch of the West. A helpful green maidservant outfits them for their journey with green clothes, a basket of green food, and a green ribbon for Toto's neck. The Guardian of the Gates directs them to the western road to the Winkie Country and puts their glasses away. Once they leave, they discover that Toto's ribbon and all the other green things have lost their color and become white.

(I'm sure you can guess the reason that everything in the Emerald City is green, but white on leaving the city. Again, however, Baum doesn't spell this out for his readers right away, instead trusting that the children will be clever enough to figure it out for themselves.)

Again we are back in movie territory, as the Wicked Witch spies the approaching travelers in her magic telescope and sends her minions after them - but first she sends a pack of forty wolves, which are quickly killed by the Tin Woodman. When the Witch finds out what happened, she sends a flock of crows to peck them to pieces. This time, the Scarecrow easily manages to scare them off (these crows apparently being much stupider than the ones back home in the Munchkin Country). The third time, the Wicked Witch sends a swarm of bees. The Scarecrow deals with this again, but his plan is quite clever - he has the others take all the straw from his body first, and then has Dorothy, Toto, and the Lion lie on the ground. The Tin Woodman covers them with the straw, hiding them from the bees. The bees arrive and die attempting to sting the Tin Woodman. Once the coast is clear, they restuff the Scarecrow and continue on their way. Next, the Wicked Witch flies into a rage and sends the Winkies to attack them with spears, but the Winkies are not particularly brave, and the Cowardly Lion easily frightens them away by roaring loudly.

I love this part because of the symmetry, and the way that each of Dorothy's companions takes his turn in defeating their attackers. It's perfectly in line with the classic fairy tale - like the many ways the witch tried to kill Snow White before the poison apple finally did the trick (or so she thought), or the three chances Rumpelstiltskin gave the queen to guess his name, or the different ways the four animals turned away the thieves in "The Brementown Musicians". (If you're not familiar with any of these stories, I may have to post an entry on Grimm's Fairy Tales at some point!)

In any case, the Wicked Witch now turns to her last resort - the Winged Monkeys. (You were wondering when she'd get around to them, huh?) The Winged Monkeys are actually summoned using a Golden Cap, which is encrusted with diamonds and rubies. Like the genie in the bottle, the cap may be used three times to summon the monkeys using a magic spell, but the Wicked Witch had already used up two of those chances, which explains why it is her last resort now. This time her plan works - the Winged Monkeys remove the straw from the Scarecrow and fling it everywhere, like they did in the movie, but they also pick up the Tin Woodman and drop him onto sharp rocks, which dent him so badly he can't move. They also tie up the Cowardly Lion and imprison him in the castle yard. The monkeys find that they dare not harm Dorothy, however, because she is protected by the Good Witch's kiss. Instead, they carry her to the castle and leave her for the Witch to deal with.

The Wicked Witch discovers that she doesn't dare harm Dorothy, either, for the same reason, and she's even more afraid because she sees the Silver Shoes and knows they are very powerful. Realizing that Dorothy doesn't know how powerful they are, however, she decides to make Dorothy her slave. Dorothy is imprisoned in the castle for many days, doing chores for the Wicked Witch, who threatens to beat her if she does not. Her only consolation is secretly visiting the Cowardly Lion at night. Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch watches Dorothy for a chance to take the Silver Shoes from her, but Dorothy never takes them off except for bedtime and bathtime. Apparently the Witch is afraid of both the dark and water, so she doesn't dare steal them at either of these times. Eventually she comes up with a plan to make Dorothy trip, successfully causing her to lose one of her shoes. The Witch snatches it and puts it on, taunting Dorothy and refusing to give it back. The girl becomes so angry that she upends the bucket of water she was using to mop the floor over the Wicked Witch. This, of course, is what causes her to melt - interestingly enough, into a pile of what looks like gooey brown sugar. Dorothy goes to free the Cowardly Lion and escape the castle, but not before she mops up the brown sugar mess that is left of the Witch, retrieves her Silver Shoe, and cleans it off too. (This amuses me to no end. Dorothy is a very neat little girl.)

I really love this, because Dorothy does a great deal to take care of herself. Rather than sitting and crying while waiting for her friends to save her, she can take care of herself - even if she defeated the Witch only inadvertantly, it took courage to stand up to her, especially for such a little girl. (We really don't know exactly how old she is, but I get the feeling she's around six years old perhaps, judging by her actions. In later books she acts a little older, perhaps eight to ten. Dorothy's personality is another topic I look forward to covering in future reviews!)

This is pretty close to the end of the movie, right? Not so the book - we're only halfway through! And you thought this was the climax! It does seem a little lopsided to have the Witch defeated so early on, unless you think of the story not being about Dorothy killing the Wicked Witch, but rather about her getting home. With that goal in mind, we have a long ways to go yet.

The Wizard of Oz, part 1

Welcome back to Fiction Flashback - you're just in time for my first review! Today I'm going to start talking about The Wizard of Oz, and how it compares with the 1939 movie. Now, I should say straight off that I don't necessarily believe one is better than the other - in fact, while I usually prefer books to the movies based on them, I didn't reread the first Oz book nearly as much as the others in the series, instead watching the movie over again. The movie story seemed to resonate with me a little better. That doesn't necessarily make one better than the other, of course, but there are plenty of differences for us to examine.

We begin our story, of course, in Kansas. Right off the bat we discover the first example of the movie's adherence to the original books. Now, we all remember that MGM's The Wizard of Oz begins in black and white (or sepia tones, depending on what version you are watching), then later switches to full Technicolor as soon as Dorothy opens the door of her house and steps into the land of the Munchkins. On rereading the book, I was surprised to discover just how perfectly this matches up with the original text:

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.

This is just the second paragraph of the book, and already we have an incredibly vivid idea of what Dorothy's home looks like. Baum doesn't even bother to tell us what color the house had once been painted, as no trace of color apparently remains. The next two paragraphs go on to describe how Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have been worn by time and sun to be as gray as their surroundings, and only Dorothy has escaped losing her natural life and color by the playfulness and joy of her dog, Toto.

The movie, as I mentioned, began in black and white originally, although many television airings of the show changed this to sepia. It could easily be argued that the original black and white was much more in line with Baum's original vision, because rather than the sense of nostalgia that sepia tones usually invoke for us nowadays, the black and white shows the colorlessness of the "real" world as compared to Oz.

Getting back to Toto - it's funny that so many think of him as a Scottie dog when in fact, the dog in the original movie was actually a Cairn Terrier. To those not aware of the difference, Cairns are similar to Scotties in appearance and are closely related breeds, but Cairns are not usually pure black as most Scotties are. The book describes Toto as a small, black dog with long, silky hair, not mentioning a specific breed, so there's definitely room for interpretation there.

I'm going to try not to focus too much on the little differences, as there are so many tiny ones that don't matter too much to the story as a whole! However, we have a pretty major break from the book straight off - the movie spends a lot more time building up the characters in Kansas, including the three farm hands, Miss Gulch, and Professor Marvel, none of whom appeared in the book. This serves well as a way to "bookend" the story with Dorothy's return home only to find that the whole journey was just a dream - but as we'll see when we get deeper into the series, Baum never intended for his stories to be looked at in such a way, and he did his best to maintain the realism, even in the fantastic setting he created. In fact, many of his forewords refer to his conversations with Dorothy as she tells him of her adventures. Of course, as a child I was so in love with the land of Oz that I strongly disliked the "it was a just a dream" ending. Even though I think it works reasonably well in the movie, I don't believe it really fits with Baum's vision, not to mention the number of times this ending has been used badly in other stories. The Wizard of Oz movie did a very good job in fleshing out the real world versions of the characters, though, and we found ourselves really liking the farmhands and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

An interesting fact I discovered - apparently an early idea for the movie was to create a special bond between Dorothy and the farmhand Hunk, who also played the Scarecrow. You can still see that Dorothy seems closer to the Scarecrow than the Tin Woodman or the Cowardly Lion. I believe they intended to suggest that eventually Dorothy and Hank would fall in love when she grew older - something that could have been believable, given that Judy Garland was seventeen when the movie was released. However, I think they made a very good choice in keeping the illusion of her youth intact, and although obviously older than Dorothy really should have been, Judy Garland played the part of a little girl rather well. Besides which, Baum generally objected to using romance as a part of children's stories, mainly because he believed romance was immaterial to a child's experience and was often quite boring to them, appealing more to their parents than the children themselves. Throughout Baum's fourteen Oz books, Dorothy never falls in love and always remains a playful child. We could probably talk for ages on the concept of eternal youth in Baum's stories, but let's move on - we're not even in Oz yet!

Since Dorothy does not get frustrated with her home and worried for Toto's safety, she does not run away in the book. Instead, the cyclone hits on page three, with barely any leadup to it. Dorothy is already in the house when it happens and grabs Toto to run for the cellar, but she isn't fast enough and trips and falls, leaving her in the house when it flies into the air seconds later. She doesn't see any visions through the window, and in fact the house's flight lasts for many hours, so that Dorothy falls asleep on the bed. She's awakened by the house falling, as in the movie, however.

Our first introduction to Oz comes before she even opens the door, because "the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little room." As soon as she leaves the house, she sees a beautiful land of lush greenery, flowers, brightly colored birds, and "a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to the little girl who had lived so long on the dry, gray prairies." This is definitely Oz, and the movie did a great job of portraying it well - the only difference being that Dorothy doesn't actually land in the Munchkin city in the book, but the Munchkins do arrive to greet her right away. (I also think this quote is a good example of how Baum does really wonderful descriptions.)

A note about Munchkins - they've now become nearly synonymous with little people in our culture, something I find vaguely bothersome. It's true that they are smaller than normal:

They were not as grown as the grown folk she had always been used to; but neither were they very small. In fact, they seemed about as tall as Dorothy, who was a well-grown child for her age, although they were, so far as looks go, many years older.

Rereading this eased some of my disgruntlement, but as a child I always associated Munchkins far more with their style of dress than with their height. Baum describes their clothing in great detail, particularly their round, pointed hats with bells hanging from the brim and the way they only wear blue. This is something the movie overlooks, that the land of Oz is divided into four parts, and each part has its signature color - the land of the Munchkins in the east being colored blue. In fact, Baum later describes the landscape itself as looking rather blue, although in this first book it's just an ordinary but beautiful countryside.

The Good Witch of the North accompanies the Munchkins to greet Dorothy, but this is not Glinda - she is small, like the Munchkins, and dresses all in white, besides also being wrinkled and white-haired. She comes from the land of the Gillikins to the north but came to investigate. This scene is much like the movie - she tells Dorothy where she is and advises her to seek the Wizard in the Emerald City for help in getting home. As in the movie, Dorothy's house has landed on the Wicked Witch of the East and killed her, but she wore silver shoes instead of ruby slippers. This is one of the changes I particularly like in the movie, because such a bright and striking color made good use of the new Technicolor technology of the time, and silver would have been wasted in that brightly colored landscape. It's interesting that one of the most iconic features of the Wizard of Oz movie is actually not a Baum creation at all. After giving her a kiss of protection, the good witch sends Dorothy off on the yellow brick road.

Dorothy doesn't meet the Scarecrow right away - instead, she walks down the road for a day and is invited by some Munchkins to stay at their house for the night. Here we get some of the dialogue that was later moved to the meeting with the good witch in the movie - the Munchkins are very kind to her and are convinced that she must be a sorceress, because she has the silver shoes, she killed the wicked witch, and because she wears a blue and white checked dress (huge props to the movie's costumers for getting that detail right). They say white is the color of magic-users, and blue shows good will towards the Munchkins.

The next day brings a meeting with the Scarecrow, which plays out almost exactly as it does in the movie - but without the singing and dancing, which wouldn't mean as much in the book, of course. Baum actually did write musicals, however, so making the movie into a musical was an extremely appropriate choice. In fact, Baum wrote a musical stage play of The Wizard of Oz, and although the plot was extremely different from both the book and the movie, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman were a very popular comedic and musical duo. You can still see this influence in the way the 1939 movie was made.

We know in the movie that the Scarecrow isn't very good at scaring away crows. In fact, the crows talk to him, laughing at him and calling him foolish, which is the reason he wants a brain in the first place, so he won't feel like such a failure. He also tells Dorothy of how he was created by the Munchkin farmer who put him in the field. We never get an explanation of just why he's alive though - we just assume, "Oh, it's Oz, anything can happen."

The journey takes much longer in the book than it does in the movie, and Dorothy and the Scarecrow stop for the night in an abandoned cottage, although the Scarecrow doesn't sleep and just stands patiently in a corner all night. This is typical of many Baum characters who aren't human, and they never seem bored at all in spite of it. The next day they meet the Tin Woodman, rusted in the forest, exactly as it happens in the movie - and once they've rescued him, they find out that it was his cottage they stayed at. One thing we learn that we don't in the movie is how the Tin Woodman was made - he was once an ordinary man named Nick Chopper (although his name is not revealed in this first book) who loved a Munchkin girl and wanted to marry her, but the old woman the girl lived with didn't want her to marry and leave her to do her chores alone. The old woman asked the Wicked Witch of the East for help, and due to a series of magically caused "accidents", the Tin Woodman's ax chopped off parts of his body one at a time, and a local tinsmith replaced each part with tin until he was made entirely of tin. This story would be extremely disturbing if it weren't for the light-hearted way the Tin Woodman tells it (a common theme in Baum's stories). He says that he has no heart in his new tin body, so he doesn't love the Munchkin girl anymore. This is when the other two convince him to join them and ask the Wizard for a heart.

In the movie, the Wicked Witch of the West comes to threaten Dorothy when she first lands in Oz, wanting revenge for her sister's death, and she later attacks the group before they meet the Cowardly Lion. In the book, no mention has been made of this particular witch yet. When they meet the Cowardly Lion in the woods, however, the scene is very much the same in the book and the movie (minus the "lions, tigers, and bears line). After they continue on their journey, we get an interesting scene where the Tin Woodman is distraught and cries because he accidentally stepped on a beetle. As the book explains:

The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything.

"You people with hearts," he said, "have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful. When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn't mind so much."

This argument is odd but amusing. I've never been entirely sure whether this means he either has a heart already or doesn't need one, because he is already kind and compassionate, but you can definitely see the parallels with the movie, where the Wizard insists that none of them need the things they are asking for.

We're about a quarter of the way through the book, but about halfway through the movie, which shows how much more there is that the movie left out! We'll keep going in a future entry, but I've come to realize that I am so familiar with the Oz books, I tend to go into much more detail with them than just a quick review. My next post might be the next section of The Wizard of Oz, although I am working on a more modern book review as well, so it depends on how quickly I finish the book to talk about it! You can expect another entry in a few days, at the very least, though. See you next time!

The link at the top is the paperback version with the original illustrations (which I'm not particularly fond of, actually). Following is a hardback version, and the version from the series edition that I own, which is now out of print but can be found used if you're interested:

Welcome to Fiction Flashback!

Welcome to Fiction Flashback! Let me introduce myself - I'm Amykat. Before we dive into reviewing, I'd like to give you a bit of background on myself and what this blog is all about.

These days, as with much of the western world, I am firmly attached to my electronics. I sometimes wonder how I got by without the internet, and I love to play video games and mess around on my computer. When I was a kid, however, I was an avid reader - I still am and enjoy reading a great deal, but actually I think "avid" is a serious understatement to describe my childhood love of reading. My parents have scores of pictures of me, hair in pigtails and face screwed up intently as I pored over the pages of a book, usually oblivious to the outside world. I devoured any book I could get my hands on - the longer, the better. The school librarians in elementary and middle school were some of my best friends, and I often spent recess browsing the shelves.

I can't quite recall what chapter books I read first, or when, but I do know that my first book series was the Oz books, and man, did I love them. These books developed in me a lifelong love of fantasy, mythology, and fairy tales that continues to inspire and drive me to this day. I remember my parents reading the first book, The Wizard of Oz, to me and my twin brother when we were about five years old. At some point I'm sure I saw the movie for the first time - I grew up watching it, as many people did. Unlike most people, however, I tracked down the rest of the Oz books and read them for myself. Many don't know that L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen full-length Oz books in all, but I certainly did, and I read each one multiple times. By the age of eight I had developed a child's near-obsession with the series - I came home from school talking like Dorothy ("Mother, I've had a simply dreadful day!") and I amused myself in class after finishing my schoolwork by scribbling ideas for an Oz theme park on a sheet of notebook paper, complete with cyclone ride. I even had a fairy princess Halloween costume of pale green satin and gauze, which I had decided was most definitely Princess Ozma.

As time passed, I graduated to other series, such as the Chronicles of Narnia, the Prydain Chronicles, and eventually fantasy series aimed more at adults. I discovered mythology and Shakespeare, and I went on to major in English as an undergraduate, focusing on such classes as classical mythology, creative writing, and Arthurian legends. My senior thesis was a novella that told the story of how King Arthur married Queen Guinevere, based on a semester of researching the earliest versions of the legends. Still, Oz has always retained a special place in my heart, and on my bookshelf. I recently came across a video review of the 1985 movie Return to Oz, and I was impressed that the reviewer actually knew that there were fourteen Oz books written by Baum. I don't know how many he'd read himself, but it occurred to me that many people are only aware of the movies based on classic books such as these. Sure, they might know that the movie was originally based on a book, but few have read the original or really know what was changed for the film. With that in mind, I've decided to take it upon myself to introduce you, dear reader, to the original novels behind many movies that are considered children's classics, and in many cases, that we ourselves grew up on.

I intend to leave some leeway for other types of reviews, but primarily we're going to focus on children's literature that has been brought to the silver screen, books that shaped my childhood in particular. I also plan to take a look at some books I haven't read before. You might see some reviews of books that were important to me as a child but have never been made into a movie, or have a film version few know about. Either way, this promises to be a lot of fun! We're going to start off our journey by traveling the yellow brick road, of course. The first few reviews will be about L. Frank Baum's Oz series, but don't worry, I'll be mixing things up with other books as well! Anyway, welcome, and I'm glad you've decided to come check things out. Please feel free to let me know what you think - comments, questions, and ideas are always welcome! I might experiment a bit with a few audio reviews, and maybe create some podcasts in addition to the written articles. We'll see what the future brings. No matter what though, I think this is going to be a fun and interesting experience, so thanks for joining me on this journey!