The original Oz books

[Cynthia Hanson]

Has anyone on here read the original Oz books series by L. Frank Baum? If so, what are your opinions of them? What did you like the best, or dislike the most about them?

 

[RedMage]

Interesting topic! I did crew work for a musical production of Wizard of Oz in high school. I did that for all the shows and, out of the 12 done while I was there, Wizard of Oz was my favorite! I've never read the books though.

Have you read them, @Cynthia Hanson? How do they stack up against the movie or, just in general, what did you think of them?

 

[Cynthia Hanson]

I've read all of Baum's 14 novels and short stories of Oz. I've read books by other Oz authors also. The books are now in public domain and I've read books by today's writers of their own visions. These visions by new Oz writers are often in a "mixed bag", of course.

As for what I think of the original Oz series, I always felt the MGM movie was far better, as well as other versions I saw in other movie versions of the first book or others. Including a cartoon series of a sequel to the movie made in honor of its 50th anniversary. And an anime movie released through Paramount in the 80s, as well as mini-series that makes the first half of the original series into a better developed "series."

The Oz books as a series in their original states can never hold up to the standards of a well-developed series. Baum had way too many inconsistencies in everything from characterizations, to history, to nature of the world's laws in Oz. Right up to the end when he tried to make the Land of Oz like a heavenly paradise for children and escape way from the real world for grown-ups in a literal sense! I kid you not.

 

[RedMage]

Wow! I think I would end up throwing one or two of those books at the wall if I were to read them due to their inconsistencies.

 

[Cynthia Hanson]

Great! because that is what I did! The Oz books series actually today has an entire fan club that is like a cult actually because those fans typically know all about the inconsistencies of the series because Baum had never intended for their to be an actual series of Oz book most of the time (he just kept adding to it due to high demanding readers) but they do their best to pretend this isn't so for the sake of wanting to make the Land of Oz "for real" or something like that.

 

[Hobbit]

I must admit that only knowing the movie version, (I'm not really a musical fan) I read a couple of the Oz books a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised, though they are, admittedly, 'of a certain time'. Much darker than I thought they would be.

If you haven't read Tad Williams' Otherland books, where the characters go to a virtual reality version of Oz, they're also worth a read.

 

[Bodhi]

I have a graphic novel version and the pictures are very good. This way I can read Oz.

I always wondered why they were less popular than the Chronicles of Narnia, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter.

 

[Cynthia Hanson]

I assume the graphic novels you have are by Eric Shanower and illustrated by Scottie Young.

As for the Oz books lack of popularity, in comparison to other fantasy books, it had to do with most of the books going out of print for a few decades in the middle of the twentieth century, and also because in comparison to the other series of books mentioned they cannot hold merit to be an excellent or developed series.