When I was a boy, I was a huge fan of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was one of the first big books I read by myself. I read it over and over, pestered my mother with questions like, If the Scarecrow doesnt have a brain, how can he talk? and, lingered over the very fine illustrations. Lots to say about Oz and its cultural impact, but this story is about how I was in the toy aisle of a grocery store and saw a Wizard of Oz coloring book. I ran right to it while mom was off filling the cart with Bisquick, Nesquick, pizza rolls, Star magazine, Signal mouthwash, and canned mushrooms. It had weird-looking versions of the characters (the tin man looked like C3P0, and the lion looked like a Hungarian plumber), but worse the story was wrong. In the book, the wizard changes into all kinds of crazy things to scare them, and in the coloring book, he was just a floating head. Annoying! Worse, the Horrible Head of Oz straight up tells them to go throw water on the witch, something that happens in an organic moment of anger in the book. Like, he tells them how to kill her and sends them off to do it like its one of those movies where a dude with a scar plunges a dagger into a blueprint. The next page just shows them soaking the witch, and then all their dreams come true. I was aubergine with rage. It was all I talked about on the car ride home. A few months later, they showed us the movie in Summer Camp, and afterward the counselor asked us if anyone had read the book. About half the hands shot up (how many would be raised today?) and the counselor asked if we noticed any differences. Someone brought up that Dorothys shoes were silver in the book but red in the movie. Someone said there was no magic hat controlling the flying monkeys, and when he called on my desperately waving hand, I shouted, You think the movies bad, you should see the coloring book at Winn Dixie! Its terrible!!
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 20:04:57 +0000
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