The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Editions

Editions

Baum's novel has been adapted and retold numerous times. In some cases, the adaptations bear only a slight semblance to the original edition. By its centennial, the novel had been translated into 22 languages such as Swahili, Tamil and Serbo-Croatian.

To celebrate the centennial of the book's publication, the University Press of Kansas published a new edition titled The Kansas Centennial Edition. Illustrated by Michael McCurdy, the black-and-white pictures spanned 24 full pages. Andrew Karp of Utopian Studies critiqued the illustrations as being "stunningly detailed" but "somber, sharp-edged, and stark". Whereas W.W. Denslow's illustrations in the first edition portrayed Dorothy and her friends as exuding warmth, McCurdy's depicted Dorothy as "plain, dumpy, even ugly" and her friends as frightened. Karp concluded that the centennial edition, because it is considerably dismal, more resembles the beginning of the 1939 MGM movie than Baum's first edition. Robert Sabuda created a pop-up book to commemorate the book's centennial. Baum scholar Michael Patrick Hearn called the book a "fond tribute" to W. W. Denslow and an "inventive interpretation" of Baum's novel. Sabuda used Denslow's first edition illustrations as "color linoleum cuts" and improved upon them by portraying the features that Denslow failed to capture.

The 2002 Sterling Publishing edition of the novel was illustrated by Michael Foreman with bright watercolors. Reviewer Heide Piehler of School Library Journal applauded Foreman for his "skillful command of color and light to emphasize the story's sense of adventure and enchantment". Piehler also admired the "subtle humorous details", including the winged monkeys' adorned with "Red Baron-style goggles". In her generally favorable review, she critiqued Foreman's depiction of a normal Dorothy as a "disappointment".

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Famous quotes containing the word editions:

    The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

    The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)