Sometime in the last year I found a like-new copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at a local used bookstore. It’s a recent edition created by Books of Wonder & Morrow, but it is modeled after the first edition of Wizard and W.W. Denslow’s beautiful design.
I’ve been imagining rereading the Oz series, all 40+ books, and I was thinking that recent acquisition would be a fine place to start. Y’gotta start with Wizard, of course, but there are many editions and many illustrators who have added their vision to Baum’s. Being as I fell in love with Wizard reading a Dover edition, a paperback which does a pretty good job of reproducing Denslow’s design – as well as his illustrations – and considering I virtually have the book memorized I read it so many times as a child, perhaps it would make the reread a fresher experience if I took advantage of an edition illustrated by someone very unlike Denslow.
Sacrilege!
… No, no. It’s not a bad thought, actually.
A thought that probably would not have entered my head had not that nice BoW/M edition gone missing. I have no idea where it could be. I haven’t dug down to the bottom of every pile or opened every stacked box, but I was sure I had no need to. Since the renovation completed we’ve been unpacking boxes, not filling them. I don’t remember when exactly I bought this new edition, but it was quite recently, long after things had to be gotten out of the way of the workers and the dust. So where could it have hidden itself?
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