Old Mombi is out when her ward, Tip, decides to make a pumpkinhead man to scare her upon her return but the joke is on Tip when Old Mombi uses the pumpkinhead to test a new spell she has gotten the component to and brings him to life. Now Tip is on the run with Jack Pumpkinhead and their new mount, the Sawhorse, to the Emerald City to escape Old Mombi's wrath. Unfortunately, when they get there they find that the city is under seige by a rebel army of women under the leadership of General JinJur. Now Tip and his friends must aid the Scarecrow to escape and get help to bring order back to the city. Their best hope will be to find Princess Ozma, the daughter of the ruler that the Wizard deposed, but she has been missing for many years now.
I actually preferred this one to the first in that the characters were a bit more complex and the actual quest moved better and the Tin Woodman was a bit more cautious with his ax.
Page count: 288p/22,866p ytd/272,016p lifetime
Showing posts with label L. Frank Baum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label L. Frank Baum. Show all posts
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
72:120 The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Ok, I'm going with the assumption that if you haven't been shut in a closet your entire life that you know the basic premise of this story. Young girl gets flown to a magical land called Oz via a tornado and spends the rest of the book trying to get back home. On the way she makes new friends: Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. The Wizard of Oz promises to help her if she brings back the silver cap of the Wicked Witch of the East. She does, he doesn't, she finds out she has had the power to go home the whole time.
So it's a fairly simple tale but the magic is in the world building. The characters aren't particularly deep or complex and you don't see an extraordinary amount of character growth or development. Dorothy is a sweet, simple girl and just happens to have an incredible amount of luck on her side to survive everything that happens to her. The other characters are similarly simple with the only exception being the total contradictory nature of the Tin Woodman who is terrified of stepping on an ant but has no problem using his ax to chop down beasts that he feels may be dangerous before finding out if they actually are. I was reading this to my 10yr old and this hypocritical actions really mad an impact on him. Every time it came up, he commented on it and was upset. Not because of the violence of it but because it wasn't f-a-i-r! It led to some good discussions and he enjoyed the world enough that we have started book 2 so we shall see where this goes.
Page count: 267p/19,446p ytd/268,596p lifetime
So it's a fairly simple tale but the magic is in the world building. The characters aren't particularly deep or complex and you don't see an extraordinary amount of character growth or development. Dorothy is a sweet, simple girl and just happens to have an incredible amount of luck on her side to survive everything that happens to her. The other characters are similarly simple with the only exception being the total contradictory nature of the Tin Woodman who is terrified of stepping on an ant but has no problem using his ax to chop down beasts that he feels may be dangerous before finding out if they actually are. I was reading this to my 10yr old and this hypocritical actions really mad an impact on him. Every time it came up, he commented on it and was upset. Not because of the violence of it but because it wasn't f-a-i-r! It led to some good discussions and he enjoyed the world enough that we have started book 2 so we shall see where this goes.
Page count: 267p/19,446p ytd/268,596p lifetime
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