Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1184289 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 284 pages

Ingram
A young citizen of Oz who learns an important magic word falls prey to the wickedness of the Nomes' ex-king who wants to destroy Dorothy, the Wizard, and Princess Ozma.

About the Author

Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) was born in Chittenango, New York. After trying many different professions, he turned to writing for children at the age of 40. The Wizard of Oz is the first and most popular of his fourteen Oz novels.

Customer Reviews

Unforgettable
I first heard this story 53 years ago in second grade. Our teacher read a portion each day. It was truly a magical time for me. I was transformed and delighted by the glass cat, the idea of miniature monkeys jumping out of Ozma's birthday cake and most of all the amazing flower that bloomed over and over again. Years later I read it again sure that the bloom would have come off the rose (figuratively speaking) and found I was enchanted again. Then I had the chance to read it to second graders of a new generation - one filled with Yu-gi-oh and Sponge Bob and I was pleasantly surprised to find them listening to the old-fashioned story told with antiquated vocabulary with the same enthusiasm I did. Most of my students had never even heard the original Wizard of Oz story or had even seen the movie!! I have since purchased other titles in this series to give to my students so that each will have one as part of their upbringing but this still remains to be my favorite Oz book.

Very good!
I would love to see George Lucas make movies based on Oz Books. ILM would do wonders these books made into movies! Natalie Portman would make an excellent Dorothy Gale or Ozma of Oz. Nicole Kidman as Glinda. Whoopie Goldberg as the Patchwork Girl of Oz. Computer animated creatures like in Jurrasic Park would be something to see! A CGI Cowardly Lion and Hungry Tiger would be great to see! This book was very good and could easily be made into a movie!

The penultimate Baum, in the ultimate edition
As the Beatles sang: "It's getting very near the end." This is the second-to-last of Books of Wonder's marvelous reissues of L. Frank Baum's Oz books (yes, folks, there's much *more* to Oz than the movie!) and the book itself is one of the gems of the entire series. One of the darker (yet most delightful) of Baum's original books features Kiki Aru, would-be sorcerer, wreaking havoc throughout the Land of Oz with his powerful word of transformation: "Pyrxqzgl." Like editor Peter Glassgold says in his afterword, I too spent hours as a kid trying to figure out how that should be pronounced! Baum never lived to see this or his final Oz book ("Glinda of Oz") published, but the maturity, mystic adventure and sheer fun of this book makes it one of the best in the series. I wonder what gems he would have given us had he lived longer! All of Baum's Oz books are excellent suggestions for parents searching for Christmas gifts for their kids who have read the three Harry Potter books to shreds. I'm sorry to see this excellent repackaging of the series nearly at an end, but as I discovered as a kid, the books themselves never end--they're there for us to re-read and re-discover for all time.