The Wizard of Oz (Puffin Classics) - L. Frank Baum [0]
The Wizard of Oz
‘Come along, Toto,’ she said. ‘We will go to the Emerald City and ask the great Oz how to get back to Kansas.’
L. FRANK BAUM
The Wizard of Oz
INTRODUCED BY
CORNELIA FUNKE
Illustrations by David McKee
PUFFIN
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First published in the USA 1900
Published in Puffin Books 1982
Reissued in this edition 2008
3
Illustrations copyright © David McKee, 1982
Introduction copyright © Cornelia Funke, 2008
Endnotes copyright © Penguin Books, 2008
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way
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978-0-14-191756-6
INTRODUCTION BY
CORNELIA FUNKE
I was born in Germany, where you didn’t read The Wizard of Oz as a child but Jim Knopf and Lucas the Steam Engine Driver, Pippi Longstocking or Emil and the Detectives, and maybe Tom Sawyer (I read that at least a dozen times), but not The Wizard of Oz.
Surely that story was not a book? It was a movie — a famous movie, with an adult woman dressed up as a girl, with lots of singing and very evil witches — wasn’t it?
I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I found out that originally there was a book (as so often with great stories) telling the tale of the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Woodman who thinks he has no heart, and the Scarecrow who believes he has no brains. But I was a so-called adult when I first read it. Today I own two quite different copies of this book: a German one with wonderful illustrations by Lisbeth Zwerger (my favourite being the one where the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow carry the sleeping Dorothy through the Deadly Poppy Field); and another one in English — the American first edition, with all its pages illustrated but only in green and red, as it was hard (and expensive) to print colour at that time.
When I started to write this introduction, I took the two books from my shelf and put them on my writing desk — and just looking at them made me realize, once again, what a timeless and unforgettable story L. Frank Baum told. Only the best stories inspire illustrators all over the world to find their own (and often very different) images for one story, because only very special stories create characters who speak to all of us, all over this world, who personify deeply human matters — the weaknesses and virtues, feelings and thoughts we all share.
Although my first edition (which means it is quite an old book!) shows the Tin Woodman in almost the same way my German (and quite new) book does, other characters are drawn differently — for example, only in the old book does the Lion wear a crown, and the Scarecrow is much fatter in the new one. Nevertheless, whichever way the reader or illustrator imagines them, the characters in this story are unforgettable and over the many years The Wizard of Oz has been