The Latest Oz Reading

At last, something that's not a comic! Yeah, I've been busy, and I have a huge backlog of just stuff I need to take care of in the coming weeks and months. How big is the backlog? I have a whole bunch of books and other items I read in my last round of Oz reading, last winter, that I haven't blogged about yet. And now I've started the latest round. I'll go back and hit some of those in the coming weeks, but right now I want to start with what I started off this round with:

• In my attempts to reread all of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, I realized I missed one a few books back. Despite his success as an author, L. Frank Baum still wanted a career in show business, and the success of the 1902 musical version of The Wizard of Oz only whetted his appetite. Shortly after the publication of The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Baum put together a treatment and scenario for a stage adaptation. It didn't get very far, and was eventually adapted to become the 1914 silent film version. Only one copy of the original treatment is known to exist, but Michael O. Riley turned it into a gorgeus little hand-bound book in his Pamami Press series. Since I've gotten all the other ones, I had to get this one as well, and Michael kindly let me buy it in installments. Baum clearly learned his lesson from previous theatrical adaptations, as this is not the book, but streamlined, with a few other characters to appeal to different audiences. The parts that become Jesseva and Danx in the movie are Jellia Jamb (!) and Pugly Muffins, and a few extra characters are thrown in for comic effect, but it follows the general arc of the story. One new character, the Scorner, is probably the genesis of Pessim, who happens to appear in the next book I read.
• After The Sea Fairies and Sky Island in my previous rounds of reading, naturally I was going to tackle The Scorecrow of Oz next (which, coincidentally was the reverse of The Patchwork Girl of Oz, in that it was based on a silent movie; The Scarecrow of Oz is considered to be one of the earliest novelizations of a movie). There's not a lot I can leally say about this, it's still a fun romp that brings Trot, Cap'n Bill, and Button Bright to Oz for good (although there's still the lingering question of Trot's parents).

That's all for now, but there are going to be a lot more reading recaps in the next few days, I hope.