After my Grandmother died, I inherited the Complete Oz library which she had amassed in the early part of the Twentieth Century, after her marriage to a successful San Francisco businessman.To her, as to us, a large disposable income spelled books...The books themselves I had always treated with reverence as they were a sacred part of my magically autistic early childhood. I remember the time a little later when my Mom tried to interrupt my reveries with a YA tale called The Green Umbrella, abou...

“Luckily, when the farmer made my head, one of the first things he did was to paint my ears, so that I heard what was going on.” – L. Frank Baum in The Wonderful Wizard of OzAlmost a year ago to this day, I was in Chicago and waltzed into Sandmeyer’s Bookstore. Displayed was the most extraordinary copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that I had ever seen. Of course, I had to have it. I pulled out my credit card and tucked away my purchase for a rainy day.After reading several one-star books, my ra...

I've never liked the movie.And that's my shameful secret, Random Goodreader. It terrified me that the mean neighbor was going to have Toto put down. And there was never any resolution to that when Dorothy came back from Oz! The movie just glossed over the fact that as soon as Toto set foot in Kansas again, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are going to turn him over to Ms. Gulch. Worse, nobody else seemed to notice this glaring plot hole, and they just kept insisting that somewhere over the rainbow, skies...

Currently filing a lawsuit with the Childhood Experience Department: Wondrous Fictional Classics Division over the fact that I didn't read this until I was a full-on adult.I love children's classics because they feel like eating candy that's good for you. They're sweet and fun and often magical but also written all old-timey so it counts are reading Classic Literature and it makes your brain bigger, guaranteed.So I'm glad (as with Anne of Green Gables) that I got around to this one eventually......

Ah such fun! I don't think I'll read the rest of the series but I did really enjoy this.

ENGLISH (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) / ITALIANODorothy is a young girl who lives with her aunts in a small farm in Kansas. Due to a tornado, she is catapulted with her house in a freaky village... Dorothy's journey, which I discovered at 38 thanks to my daughter and to the well-established habit of reading something to her before going to bed, begins in this way. The thing that impressed me most about this wonderful story is that the title "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is rather misleading. Yes, ...

كانوا أربعة..ولكن ليس كأي أربعة..خرجوا للبحث عما ينقصهم..لم يكتفوا بالتمني..تغلبوا على العقبات..بالكثير من الحب..وهناك في مدينة الزمرد حصلوا على ما تمنوه..ولكن بعد ان أدركوا قيمة ما لديهم شكلت تلك الرواية جزء ثابت من طفولتنا ..لمن قراها ولمن شاهد الفيلم..الابطال محملين برموزفخيال الماتة هو الفلاح المتهم في ذكاؤه..مهما كانت اهميته..ورجل الصفيح يرمز للعامل ومعانته من الآلية والجمود ..اما الأسد فهو السياسي المرتعد للأبد من فقدان منصبه .. ولا اتذكر حقا الى ماذا ترمز دوروثي طابع القصة أمريكي جدا ولكن...

Rick Polito, Marin Independent Journal, 1998

The Wizard of Oz as An Economic Parable: A Short IntroductionThis might be common knowledge or it might not be. Some economics textbooks claim this is a wonderfully esoteric nugget: The story of Oz was an economic parable. Take that, all you who said economics can't be fun.Redistributions of wealth caused by unexpected changes in the price level are often a source of political turmoil. From 1880 to 1896 the price level in the United States fell 23 percent. This deflation was good for Haves (cred...

Once upon a time there lived a Golden Age gay icon, who whiled away her pre-waxing years sitting atop a split-rail fence in some dour, nondescript American Midwest landscape. Her dreams of a more outrageously fierce existence in the big city (wearing roller skates and one-foot-diameter afro wigs and dancing to Army of Lovers in between lines of blow) were hemmed in on all sides by rusted farm equipment, NAPA Auto Parts Stores, and a lone, dejected Applebee’s out on the turnpike. Kansas didn’t ev...