Dorothée est une jeune orpheline qui habite le Kansas. Emportée par un cyclone en compagnie de son chien Toto, elle atterrit avec sa maison dans un étrange pays, écrasant au passage la méchante sorcière de l'Est. Désireuse de rentrer chez elle, Dorothée prend conseil auprès de la (gentille) sorcière du Nord, qui lui recommande d'aller trouver le puissant magicien d'Oz dans la cité d'émeraude. C'est chaussée de souliers d'argent magiques qu'elle va suivre la route de briques jaunes pour gagner la fameuse cité. En chemin, elle va croiser un épouvantail qui rêve d'avoir une cervelle, un bûcheron de fer-blanc qui, lui, voudrait un coeur et, enfin, un lion poltron auquel ne nuirait pas un peu de courage. Après de nombreuses péripéties, les quatre amis atteindront la cité d'émeraude. Pour autant, ils ne seront pas au bout de leurs peines, car le magicien d'Oz exigera d'eux un exploit hors du commun…Mais …
Dorothée est une jeune orpheline qui habite le Kansas. Emportée par un cyclone en compagnie de son chien Toto, elle atterrit avec sa maison dans un étrange pays, écrasant au passage la méchante sorcière de l'Est. Désireuse de rentrer chez elle, Dorothée prend conseil auprès de la (gentille) sorcière du Nord, qui lui recommande d'aller trouver le puissant magicien d'Oz dans la cité d'émeraude. C'est chaussée de souliers d'argent magiques qu'elle va suivre la route de briques jaunes pour gagner la fameuse cité.
En chemin, elle va croiser un épouvantail qui rêve d'avoir une cervelle, un bûcheron de fer-blanc qui, lui, voudrait un coeur et, enfin, un lion poltron auquel ne nuirait pas un peu de courage. Après de nombreuses péripéties, les quatre amis atteindront la cité d'émeraude. Pour autant, ils ne seront pas au bout de leurs peines, car le magicien d'Oz exigera d'eux un exploit hors du commun…Mais cela suffira-t-il ?
I went into this knowing practically nothing about the story. I've never seen the movie (ANY movie), had never read the book, and only knew what I'd been able to glean from memes and other pop-culture references.
It was pretty good. I enjoyed the forward too, which made multiple references to how the book differs from the movie, and although I'd not seen the movie, I was familiar enough with things like the red slippers and the "there's no place like home" quote. Neither of which appear in the book.
It's a fine story and I enjoyed it. One thing that I'm sure the author didn't expect to stick with me, but it did because of current sensibilities, is how the singular genderless pronoun ("they" today) used to be "he". Even when explicitly referencing a hypothetical female, the author uses "he" -- It was something along the lines …
I went into this knowing practically nothing about the story. I've never seen the movie (ANY movie), had never read the book, and only knew what I'd been able to glean from memes and other pop-culture references.
It was pretty good. I enjoyed the forward too, which made multiple references to how the book differs from the movie, and although I'd not seen the movie, I was familiar enough with things like the red slippers and the "there's no place like home" quote. Neither of which appear in the book.
It's a fine story and I enjoyed it. One thing that I'm sure the author didn't expect to stick with me, but it did because of current sensibilities, is how the singular genderless pronoun ("they" today) used to be "he". Even when explicitly referencing a hypothetical female, the author uses "he" -- It was something along the lines of, "If a boy or girl wanted to do xyz, then he would have to...."
Clearly, there used to be nothing strange about using "he" to refer to a singular person of any gender. I find that... interesting, because even I have adopted "they" for that purpose in my everyday speech.
One negative is that the edition I read, which I got from Everand, had some bad editing in it. I don't know if some of those issues were in the original printing, but at least some of them were clearly issues caused by bad OCR. Why can't people just proofread?
But don't let that detract from your enjoyment of the story. Once again, it's really good. It feels like a piece of history, a really nostalgic walk down memory lane, that puts me in mind of many of the children's stories I read as a child. It gave me the warm fuzzies!