Tag: The Wizard of Oz

The Thief Lord

September 17th, 2019
Pickpockets, Venice, and a Magic Carousel

What could possibly go wrong?

Alright, so after griping over The Wizard of Oz, I owe you a good book review. And here it is, in all its whimsical, gritty, beautiful, bizarre, glory.

The Thief Lord, everyone.

Book Review 7 (spoiler-free): The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke

Series: (standalone)

Genre: Children’s Fantasy/Magical Realism

Bookmarked One Rating: 8/10

Completion Date: Late Summer 2016

Content for the Sensitive Reader: some mild language/violence, robberies and pickpocketing without direct punishment, references to churches as “creepy,” and smoking.

It’s a weird book. Probably why I like it.

I didn’t actually fall in love with it at first read. I think this was around the time I had first gotten my claws into Inkheart and was reading everything else Cornelia Funke I could find.

The Thief Lord is not Inkheart, that’s for sure. And for 75ish percent of the book, it doesn’t even seem like fantasy.

She saved up for the last quarter of the book so things could get really interesting.

That being said, the first part has its own charm. I am the first to pounce on a rich, well-developed high fantasy, but some books don’t actually require a magical element to be good. Like Robin Hood. They’re just good. The first part of The Thief Lord is like that.

The scene is Venice. An abandoned movie theater. The characters, children, pickpockets and runaways by trade, and one Victor Getz, detective.

What else could you possibly need?

Just a boy who calls himself the Thief Lord, a man who takes him seriously, a few charming scenes with pigeons, a fat pawnbroker, a charming photographer with gondola earrings, and a magic carousel (which, by the way, makes an offhand appearance in Fearless).

Yeah.

After reading Inkheart, I easily fell in love with the beginning of The Thief Lord. In order of appearance,
1. I loved Hornet with her long braided hair and “slightly hoarse” voice. And she had my taste in books. If I were any of the characters (fun as it would be to play the part of Scipio), I have little doubt I’d be Hornet.
2. I loved the movie theater. Woo, did I love the movie theater! I’ve almost never looked at a movie theater since without thinking of theirs, slowly sinking beneath the Venetian waves. Somewhere in the ages since I read that book, I realized I wanted to live there, too. Hornet reading aloud at night, her voice echoing off the walls, Prosper mending Bo’s socks, everyone listening for Scipio’s footsteps…
3. I loved Prosper and Bo. They are the perfect pair of brothers. The kind that are so good and sweet you want to hug them both and tell them all their dreams will come true, just hold on tight, everything will be fine. They would give up anything for each other. Anything.
4. I loved the idea of the dashing Scipio running about Venice in his plague doctor mask–I want to do that! I want to stroll about in a mask and have his even confidence that nobody thinks twice about it. And I want to go running across rooftops in a long black cloak. I love the way he tells the stories of his exploits. Storyteller, liar, something in between, well, we have that in common. And by this point, I think I’ve made clear my weakness for good thief characters.
5. I loved the deceit. Weird thing to love, I know. But I love it when characters get snared in their own web of secrets and lies, when the web becomes so thick they can’t tell what’s real and what’s make-believe.
6. I loved Bo. Especially Bo and his kittens, Bo getting into trouble, Bo just acting like any other kid his age, and Bo being stubborn and knowing he isn’t a painting in a gallery just for looking at.
7. I loved Riccio! Riccio always made me laugh in the first half, especially his sparring matches with Barbarossa and hunting after sweets (note here, of the movie adaptation, Riccio was cast perfectly. It’s not often I get to say that).
8. I loved that the kids weren’t invulnerable. That they got colds living in the theater and had stuffy noses, and got banged up and admitted that life was scary and hard. It was gorgeous. So many books act like pain or the common cold don’t exist, and they’re so much less real for it.
9. I loved baby Barbarino. Oh, I laughed and laughed. Another thing the movie adaptation got right…minus the curly hair, that is.
10. I love the weird ending. I love how it doesn’t feel right. I love that Scipio ends up…well to avoid spoilers, not unhappy. I love that just when everything seemed over, Scipio showed up and said let’s have one more adventure and see if we can make things worse. I love that he went back for his cat, even though I thought it was weird until all of a few months ago, when I realized I’d sadly do almost the exact same thing. I love that Cornelia has twisted parts of an old story into something new, making us all wonder if Peter Pan had the right idea after all. I love that I still haven’t made up my mind about if she’s right or not. I love that every time I think about it, I realize I’ve fallen for it a little more.
It didn’t actually happen all at once. I finished it right before the school year started, sat in my beanbag chair, looked at the beautiful cover and thought well, that was weird.

Or some such. You get the idea.

I set the book aside, read something else (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was also that summer, if I remember correctly), wondered if I liked the ending. Thought it was a weird book.

Then something happened. I don’t know when.

Six months, maybe a year later. I found out about the movie adaptation.

Both halves of my brain: we must watch it.

So I did. Because I suddenly realized that I loved the book. All of it. Scipio, Prosper, Bo, Hornet, Riccio, the theater, Venice, the carousel, everything, everything, all of it. And I had to see the movie, even if it got things dead wrong because I wanted to see them all again, just like it was the first time, fresh and new as a clean white page.

And now I’m realizing that I’ve written almost the entire review with nothing negative to say about the book.

Huh.

I guess it’s going to have to stay that way because I can’t think of anything now to grouse over.

I would have a few years ago.

Sometimes Cornelia’s books just have to grow on me. I was totally dissatisfied with Inkspell after I read it…and Reckless disgusted me the first time and a half…now I find myself talking about them like old friends (don’t get cocky, Jacob Reckless. I still don’t approve of you).

As for the movie adaptation…well, stick with the book. It’s not bad. It’s actually pretty good. But stick with the book. It’s better. By far.
The Wizard of Oz

September 1st, 2019
And a few of the reasons I wish I’d spent my time reading something else

Book Review 6: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Series: Technically a standalone; there are other Oz books, but mostly written by another author (Does that make them fanfiction?)

(Correction: apparently I was misinformed and Baum did write some of the others. Sorry!)

Genre: Children’s Fantasy/Classics

Content for the Sensitive Reader: Essentially none. No foul language or graphic violence. Some characters are referred to as good or bad witches; Dorothy drops a house on one and accidentally kills another (both were the bad kind, in case that makes a difference to you)

BookmarkedOne Rating: 5/10

I have never liked The Wizard of Oz. Never.

I guess it started with my general pigheadedness. The book and movie are cult classics (is that the proper term? I don’t know anymore.). And I’d heard as a little girl they were weird and full of witches and flying monkeys that scared my mother when she watched the movie it as a girl. So I said no, thank you. No Oz for me.

Then comes the point that often comes with me, the moment when as a writer I realize something is so popular I actually should read it so I don’t feel I’m being categorized as “uncultured swine.” And because I want to know why it has so much popularity. What’s so good about it that everyone stands in awe?

As far as The Wizard of Oz, I’m still wondering.

I still didn’t want to see the movie.

So I did what all true nerds do.

I read the book instead, certain it would be better.

It is…slightly better. I won’t argue if someone wants to debate me on it. Because honestly, I found very little to love in either.

So here, in what I must apologize for being more rant than strict book review, are the top 5 reasons I didn’t like The Wizard of Oz.
1. A word from L. Frank Baum. There’s a quote from L. Frank Baum, tucked in the introduction of the edition I read. Maybe you know it. He said (strongly paraphrasing here), that as a child he tired of moralistic tales designed to frighten children into being good. I won’t argue that lots of my favorite Grimm’s do fall into that category. But I will probably fight to my dying breath the idea that you can build a story utterly without a moral. Intentionally or unintentionally! Even as a tweenage girl reading the book for the first time, I was put out. If you don’t have morals, some reason, some rule for why you should do one thing and not another, what is the point? Do you roll dice to figure it out? I don’t ask for stories to shove a moral down my throat. I resent those as much as anyone else. But stories without a moral, even implied? Are you sane? Needless to say, my tweenage eyes were somewhat jaded as I read the book from page one.
2. The characters are very flat. And I know that’s common in fairytales, but usually there’s something else to redeem the story. Dorothy is static, and there’s not a whole lot of character to relate to in her. She doesn’t easily frighten or laugh. Now, seriously, if at seven years old, I’d been dropped into the middle of the yellow brick road in a pair of silver shoes with a bunch of cheerful Munchkins with funny manners, I’d be enjoying myself. And if attacked by wild beasts, I doubt I’d handle things quite so calmly. It feels more like it’s being written by an adult than lived by a child. Like in the Victorian fairytales, sometimes you could almost feel the writers smiling benevolently and winking at other parents as they read the stories to their children. No. No, thank you.
3. The plot is very simple. Get on the path, stay on the path, your hero’s journey will not fail. This is a minor grumble, but still.
4. We’re in Oz, and everything is described as if it’s perfectly ordinary. I want to smell the flowers! I want to get off the clearly marked path and see what is there! At least in Wonderland, Carroll let Alice get lost for a little while so she could wonder at all the strange things. But Dorothy only seems to see them as obstacles.
5. It’s more thickly spread allegory than anything else. Moralistic or not, the “China people” and “cowardly lion” and “humbug wizard” seem more like arrows pointing at the morals Baum was avoiding more than anything else. Don’t be too careful or pretentious of your beauty, you’ll grow brittle and break. Don’t be a tyrant, someone will be stronger than you later. Don’t be a humbug…even though it’s clearly glorious fun and you can get people to build a city in your honor and treat you like Miguel and Tulio from The Road to El Dorado because someone will discover you eventually and you won’t be a clever enough liar to sneak your way out of it without help. Personally, I’d rather have pure invention. We aren’t told why Snarks exist in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem. But I’m awfully glad they do! Their mysterious, unexplained nature is one of the reasons I’m fully prepared to join the Bellman and the Baker in hunting for one if ever they call at my door.
I did eventually see the movie some years down the road. I intentionally avoided it for ages, just so I could shock people who had. Unfortunately, I sort of got tricked into it. I had to take a literature class in my freshman college year, and guess what? One of the books on the list was The Wizard of Oz. And in class, the teacher decided to have us all watch it.

Thanks, college education.

To be fair, it was a pretty good class. I just wasn’t eager to have it spoil my fun.

And I may be especially ruthless in reviewing this book because of a difference in perspective with Baum. I can’t remember any objectionable language or any of the other content that creeps into perfectly good kid’s books today.

But long story short, I’d much rather read something with relatable characters and excitement than spending the afternoon with a little girl from Kansas who is as staunch and serious as a forty-year-old woman. Like Peter Pan or The Hunting of the Snark or The Fog Diver or Story Thieves.

Classics aren’t always deserving of their immortal status.

You wouldn’t believe how many little-known books are.

Sorry for the ranting review! I’ll try to pick a book I like next time so we’ll all feel refreshed. Thanks for reading, and if you love The Wizard of Oz…please don’t hate me.

BookmarkedOne

Tag: The Wizard of Oz

The Thief Lord

Book Review 7 (spoiler-free): The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke

Series: (standalone)

Genre: Children’s Fantasy/Magical Realism

Bookmarked One Rating: 8/10

Completion Date: Late Summer 2016

Content for the Sensitive Reader: some mild language/violence, robberies and pickpocketing without direct punishment, references to churches as “creepy,” and smoking.

The Wizard of Oz

Book Review 6: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Series: Technically a standalone; there are other Oz books, but mostly written by another author (Does that make them fanfiction?)

Genre: Children’s Fantasy/Classics

Content for the Sensitive Reader: Essentially none. No foul language or graphic violence. Some characters are referred to as good or bad witches; Dorothy drops a house on one and accidentally kills another (both were the bad kind, in case that makes a difference to you)

BookmarkedOne Rating: 5/10