1900: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Book Name: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Author: L. Frank Baum

Genre: Fantasy; Children's

Year Published: 1900

For the second book in my challenge I thought I'd go all the way back to the start and the year 1900. Originally I planned to read the full 100 years of books in chronological order, but to be completely honest I thought I would find it a little difficult only reading relatively old books for some time. For example, whilst reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I found that although I could tell it was aimed at children, the language used was of course quite different to what you'd find in a modern children's book, from little things like, "Toto did not like it", as opposed to "Toto didn't like it" to phrases such as "resolved to wait calmly" and "gave a cry of amazement". I read two more recent children's books around the same time as this novel and it's safe to say this kind of phrasing featured in neither of them. Given that this book was aimed at children, I figured that adult novels would be even more difficult to get into reading and so it would perhaps be more fun and refreshing to skip between time periods and genres when choosing which book to read next. I may go for a simple method of rolling a d100 to choose books, but we shall see.

As for the content of the book, I have to say that I did find it fun to read. I watched the film The Wizard of Oz quite a long time ago so I could only remember the basic storyline of Dorothy goes to Oz, meets x, y & z and they all want things so they ask the Wizard for them. Therefore it was quite fun to read the book and rediscover all the events and of course find the ones that didn't even feature in the film, or at least that I don't remember being in the film, such as a land of china people and the field of poppies which makes them fall asleep. Something that struck me in particular was the fact that at times the book was really quite creepy, such as when you think about how exactly is the scarecrow talking when his face is only painted on. But despite a few points like this, where I did question what on earth was going on, and yes, I know it's a children's fantasy novel, it was overall a good and well-written tale and I found it easy to read quickly and often, though maybe I wouldn't recommend it for particularly young children as some of the content is a little weird for nowadays.

Books I Read In Between: Who Could That Be At This Hour? - Lemony Snicket (2012); There's A Boy in the Girls' Bathroom - Louis Sachar (1987)