The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz is one of my favorite books from when I
was little. At one point in my childhood, I actually refused to answer
to “Kathleen” and insisted on being called “Dorothy.” In my childhood,
I was an avid reader of the Oz books and I watched the film version so
much I broke the VHS tape.
Written
by L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz is the first
journey into the Land of Oz and was published in 1900. The novel is an
account of the adventures of Dorothy Gale and her first encounter with
the Land of Oz. She is swept into Oz by a cyclone and while she is
there, she meets a scarecrow, a tin woodsman and a cowardly lion. The
four new friends travel through the Land of Oz searching for their
hearts' desires: home, intelligence, heart and courage. Baum later went
on to write 13 more novels about the Land of Oz. Some books
featured the original characters and some books had entirely new
characters.
Because
the Oz series was so successful, after the death of L. Frank Baum, many
different authors continued the series or wrote their own take on the
Land of Oz and its inhabitants. The most recent success of an alternate
view of Oz is the novel Wicked: The
Life and Times of the Wicked Witch
of the West by Gregory Maguire. This novel was also made into a
Broadway musical and spawned a sequel, Son of a Witch.
Wicked
presents a parallel view to of the Land of Oz. It takes place in
Oz
before Dorothy came from Kansas. The story focuses on the life of
Elphaba, a green-skinned girl who one day becomes the Wicked Witch of
the West. Maguire's novel presents a sympathetic view of Elphaba and
suggests that her actions toward Dorothy were just misunderstood. In my
storybook, I am using a location in Oz invented by Maguire, but I will
explain more later.
Dorothy’s
journey through Oz is far more complicated than some people
realize. The 1939 film version attempts to tell Dorothy’s story in just
101 minutes. While the movie hits the highlights, there are many
creatures, details, and adventures left out. For example, after the
Wicked Witch of the West is dead, the film has Dorothy return to Oz and
then back to Kansas. In the novel, the death of the Wicked Witch is
only halfway through her adventures!
Another
very important thing to
understand about the novel that is different from the book is that Oz
is not just a dream Dorothy has. Oz is a real physical place within the
books that people can go to, as Dorothy and her family do several
times in later books. Through the stories, I hope to
bring light to
the adventures that are little known, but just as amazing. How did
Dorothy and the
Cowardly Lion really escape the deadly poppy field? What does the
great and powerful Wizard of Oz look like? How does Dorothy and her
friends cross the
fields of the West? How does Dorothy make it back to Kansas?
To
retell select chapters from Baum's first Oz novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a girl
named Judy and some of her friends will learn the stories from teachers
at Shiz University. In
Maguire's novel Wicked, Shiz
University is a co-ed college in Oz that
Elphaba attends. This is where she meets a girl named Galinda, and you
may know her as Glinda the Good Witch of the North. Borrowing from Wicked, the students in
my storybook also attend
Shiz University, but long after Elphaba's time and Dorothy's return to
Kansas. Judy attends a series of classes:
History of Oz, Animal Studies, Ozian Psychology and "Journey to Oz," a
seminar class. The
teachers you encounter will all be different races or species that
exists in Oz (such as a munchkin or winged monkey). Each teacher was
affected
differently by Dorothy’s visit and her journey through Oz. They will
present different tales and perspectives on how Oz has changed since
Dorothy first landed in Munchkin Country and on top of the Wicked Witch
of the East.
