spoken for

Rating: 9

For Elijah’s literature class I’ve decided to read to him (since he’s still learning to read himself) from The Treasury of Oz which is all of the 15 Oz books by L. Frank Baum.

I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz years ago – many many years ago, long enough to only remember that the original book has a lot more content than the 1939 movie we all know and love – so this has been fun for both of us. Since watching the movie last Spring, Elijah’s been interested in it. He watched it again last week and was already noticing the differences.

If you click the image through to amazon.com for the book, though, have a look inside. It is 548 pages: 532 pages of double column, 10 pt text with no illustrations, and 16 pages of tables of contents and copyright info. That’s a lot of text!

We’re reading about a chapter a day, though there are a couple of days we missed it due to a larger work load in other subjects and what not, and there have been a couple of days that we’ve read two chapters. More recently, while I read, Elijah has been drawing in a sketch book. So far he’s drawn Dorothy and Scarecrow in the forest, Scarecrow stuck on the pole in the river, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion crossing a tree bridge in the forest. Toto’s in there somewhere, too. None of them are great works of art, but it’s awesome he’s doing this because he doesn’t usually want to do things that are considered art. So we kill two birds with one stone there. That was a great suggestion from one of my friends, in order to help him concentrate.

It’s a little funny, though, because as I read I change a lot of the words that I think are too big for him (so I don’t have to stop and explain what they mean, I just use a synonym), words like “forthwith,” “dominion,” and “indignantly.” It also goes to show you how ingrained I am with the movie. I find myself stumbling over where the Tin Man is mentioned because he’s always called the Tin Woodsman (I keep saying “the Tin Man” though my brain reads the proper words) and “the yellow brick road” because it’s always called “the road of yellow brick.”

Strangely enough, I am glad this book doesn’t have any illustrations other than the cover. No illustrations means when Elijah draws, he can use his imagination more readily (he’s usually only imaginative in more mechanical things) and it means I don’t have to keep showing him illustrations over and over again!

I’m enjoying it, though. The chapters are not too long to read in one sitting and it will be fun to read the other 14 books that follow The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I have to admit I’ve not only never read any of them, but I’ve also never seen any movies from them or what not, so I have no idea what adventures they hold. :)

And, of course, since it can take us 2 or 3 days to cover a page front and back due to the sheer amount of text per page, we will probably be using this book for literature class for the next five years, haha! When he can read well enough, he’ll be reading it to me!

I will try to update this review after we finish each book with reviews of the individual books.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – the most well-known of all of his books, we’ve finished this one. I’d completely forgotten most of the differences between the book and the movie. I remembered a few things like the guys with the flinging heads but had forgotten how this ends so much differently than the movie. I think that has confused my kid a bit, as he expected it to follow the movie exactly, but I think he understood it quite well and enjoyed the end as well.