Saturday, December 19, 2009

The latest Oz reading

I'm on my winter break now, so I hope to get a lot of reading done over the next two weeks. We'll see how many entries I can dish out before New Year's. But first, a couple of ones I just wrapped up.


  • Tales from the Hood, volume six of the Sisters Grimm series. If you're not already familiar with the series from my talking about the previous volumes here, just take a look at this video:

    The Oz content is small in this book. The Grimms have a run-in with the Scarecrow, who is the librarian. One of the books they come across during their research is Fodor's Guide to Oz (alongside Frommer's Lilliput, Lonely Planet's Narnia, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Neverland — those are some travel books I would really like to read!), and there's a mention of the Sawhorse. Laura and I were at the Winkie Convention a couple of years ago when author Michael Buckley presented, and I got the series for that. I've been adding since then, and haven't regretted it at all.
  • The other recent read is The Wizard of Oz/El Mago de Oz, a very brief adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with text in both English and Spanish. There's no acknowledgment of L. Frank Baum, but it is retold by Carol Ottolenghi and illustrated by Jim Talbot. For some reason, the Wicked Witch of the West has stolen the Scarecrow's brain, the Tin Man's heart, and the Lion's courage before Dorothy ever meets them. There are also a lot of shortcuts, and major incidents are covered in just a couple of sentences. I expect that in an adaptation like this, but some of the choices were odd. I did enjoy the illustrations, however, and I can read Spanish well enough that I managed to understand that part of the book, and even picked up some vocabulary.

Okay, that's it for now. Coming up, a few items I've had for years, but realized I'd never actually read. This could be educational.

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