"The Annotated Wizard of Oz"

[fiefoe]

The book is hefty. Michael Patrick Hearn obviously likes doing his homework.

<Good to know:>
__ The first children's book by Baum, "Mother Goose in Prose" (1897) was also the first book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish.
__ The illustrator W. W. Denslow always faithfully drew the Scarecrow's left eye bigger than the right. This emphasis on the left eye is but one of several examples in L Frank Baum's writing of sinistrality, because Baum was left-handed.
__ Baum's irony ("No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people... would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home." The Scarecrow sighed. "Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.") was lost on the makers of the movie, and hence that cutesy "There is no place like home." slogan.

Sometimes Hearn's commentaries are a bit gratuitous, ("Only the witches can wear white." -- Baum is playing with convention here, see? You see??) as if he doesn't trust the reader to discover the subtleties for herself. Actually, the nice thing about reading a classic children's story like this is that one can pay attention to details instead of having to monitor the story flow.

One omission from his notes: Denslow always included a stylized seahorse in his signature.
_________________________________________________
Synchronicity: a discussion of stepmothers in fairy-tales on Mefi, which led me to two strange Grimm Brother tales. Good strange; bad strange.