The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Troll Illustrated Classics) [Paperback]

This was a wonderful edition of "the Wizard of Oz", published by Troll Associates. This book was also out-of-print, so you can only buy it from BiblioQuest, and it actually has a different front-cover picture: the ACTUAL COVER has the friends walking along the Yellow Brick Road, with the Emerald City not too far away. A tree is over their heads, flwoers are around them and the "THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ" is in CAPITAL white letters above the image, while "TROLL Illustrated Classics" is in a sash underneath. A big thick orange border is along the edges of the book. What you see on Amazon is actually manipulated: instead of moving the Scarecrow closer to the Lion in front of the throne, they instead copy the candles behind the Tin Woodman and move them behind the Lion (Toto is behind Dorothy's right foot).

I'm sure that those of you who have seen the sample pages will agree that Dorothy looks like a teenaged Fairuza Balk (or Christina Ricci) with Liza Minneli's hair in braids, wearing her mother's MGM dress with extra puffy sleeves and Alice's shoes.

As said above, all of the pictures are beautiful, even the 2 of the cyclone. This may be the only time when you can see a picture of Dorothy and Toto looking at Oz BEFORE they meet the Good Witch, etc. (Barry Moser did the same thing, but in B&W, and it's hard to make out. Michael Hargue did have Dorothy look around at the place too, but the people were seen coming from a distance and there was only green grass & trees with a blue house; almost all other editions of the book have Dorothy meeting the people). The designs for the Good and Wicked Witches are a bit disappointing: the North Witch is very small and doesn't really look that old at all (but the Munchkin Men have great outfits), the Wicked Witch of the West looks like a Nasty Old Gypsy woman (but it's slightly an improvement over W. W. Desnlow's, as I see her, Nasty Old Grandma - there is no picture of the Wicked Witch of the East's feet) and instead following the original book description, Glinda has a big gold crown (which looks like MGM's Billie Burke as Glinda hat) on her long smooth golden hair, wearing a glittering red/ruby dress and red shoes that look like today's (high-heeled, open-toed, no ankles), as she holds a small sceptre (her chair doesn't look like a throne, either). Perhaps the one thing that spoils the beautidul pictures is the shortening of the story, but there's not too much here, so there's still plenty left of the oiginal story. The parts of the story taken out (apart from Kansas' description and the Wizard's other appearances, of course) are Boq's Party, the Stories of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, the Ditch and the Kalidahs, the Stork (all other editions of the book either keep the full adventure of the river or take it completely out; THIS book has them cross the river without the Scarecrow getting stuck on a pole), the Green family, the Winkie Army attacking (no Winkies are drawn), the Story of the Golden Cap and the Winged Monkeys and the Forest of Beasts with the Spider.

The book could've had another page of the house in the cyclone, so that then the picture of Dorothy looking at Oz could be on the left page, extending onto the right page, resulting in 50 pages instead of 48. When the Wizard appears in Oz, he is already an old man wearing green with white hair/moustache (similar to Bert Newton's design in the stage version with Nikki Webster) and the Emerald City already built. Along the Yellow Brick road and other places, we see mountains off in the distance. We see the Emerald Gate on their return from the West. The Golden Cap and Silver Shoes look pretty, but not that brilliant. The Throne seems to be the same as MGM's vague portrayal. The Winged Monkeys wear flying suits and goggle-helmets just like Barry Moser's version, but with REAL wings. The Melting Witch could do with some more water showing on the floor around her, and instead of being shocked at Dorothy's triumph like some books, in here she's angry at her defeat by a young girl. I believe that all "Wizard of Oz" books illustrated by such great artists as Charles Santore, Greg Hildebrandt and Tom Newsom (he did this edition), should be FULL TEXT and not 'Abridged', then we can get more fabulous pictures. Even though I have yet to get it, I think this is why I'll like Lisbeth Zwerger's edition, because even with those 'weird/bizzare' pictures, the full original story will be there to read again.

Don't be disheartened at the bad points, there are still plenty of good points with thsi book too.

If there are those of you who have seen the MGM movie, and haven't read the story yet and want to, but are afriad that it may take too long, then this would be a good book to order (remember, from BiblioQuest) because it has a "MGM Movie + Original Story" look.

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