The Wizard of Oz

My first impression of The Wizard of Oz was that it looked like a childish book. What surprised me, was the language used, I came across quite a lot of words I had not heard or read before. This might be because the book is rather old, thus the language is also different. Even though I was able to understand the words due to the context, I think it could cause some difficulties with young children that are native Dutch speakers. A lot of imagination is being used in the book, which appeals to me; it keeps the book lively and the story doesn’t get boring.

Personally, for Dutch readers, I would say the book is suitable for the age of 13 to 14. This because of the high amount of difficult words, I think younger children would get demotivated if they don’t understand the used words. If the book was to be given to older pupils, I think they would say it is a childish book and that they think they’re too old to read it. Additionally, I would prefer to let the pupils read the book with much guidance, helping them to understand what the story is about instead of them blocking due to the language.

I liked the fact that the story kept surprising me, once I was halfway through I thought that it was going to become a dragging story, for I thought the road was almost done and they were going to keep on talking about other things to fill up the book. I was pleasantly surprised because there were enough new elements brought up to keep the story exciting so it remained interesting.

The ending was a bit anticlimactic to me; she gets home, the end. It would be more fun if it was to end off with something as that there suddenly was colour instead of all grey in Kansas, making everything happier than before. Now it is as if nothing has changed except that she has made an insane journey.

As in every book about an adventure, every time they start an adventure, it seems as if they won’t be able to bring it to a good ending and then something wonderful happens and everything ends up as you would want it to. What did appeal to me was the story being kind of divided into a few small adventures, making the reader curious how they were going to get to the ending of each separate adventure.

As I said before, I was pleasantly surprised about the diversity of the book and like it a lot more than I thought I was going to. When looking at the characters, everyone can connect to part of all of them. They all want something they think they do not have, when they actually do. And for Dorothy, even if the place she gets to seems much better than where she came from, she misses home and wants to get back to that which she knows and is used to.

I think, in the end, everyone agrees that there is no place like home.