07 May 2007

New Way to Read The Wizard of Oz

Looking for Oz content, I'm taking a tip from Blair Frodelius's Ozmapolitan update and highlighting this unusual version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

It's a hand-drawn artwork depicting the main characters of the MGM movie on their way to the Emerald City, composed entirely of the letters of chapters 1-11. At the right is a blurry thumbnail of the upper left corner, where the book begins. The artist cleverly avoids the discrepancy of the book's silver shoes and the movie's ruby slippers by not showing Dorothy's footwear at all.

Most of the other posters created in this format address adult concerns, but there is a page of nursery rhymes.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think this is unreal.. bravo.. very creative. i actually bought a couple of them.. its a great gift at that price..

J. L. Bell said...

I wrote that the poster is "composed entirely of the letters of chapters 1-11." I didn't realize until a coupla days later that it doesn't contain all the letters. The first I in "prairies" is missing. But that's what you get in handwritten art.

Anonymous said...

why are you so negative about this piece? i think its pretty darn creative..

J. L. Bell said...

I like the poster; that's why I featured it.

But I don't like typos. Working as an editor for 10+ years does that to you.

Anonymous said...

If you are an editor who doesn't like typos, why did you spell couple incorrectly?

I bought one myself after seeing your post, but find it odd you would complain about one letter being missing, considering this was done completely by hand, without the use of an auto spelling program, probably contains ten's of thousands of letters and must have taken forever to do. Have you seen this thing in person? If not, get one, you will be blown away and not really care there is an "i" missing.

J. L. Bell said...

I believe that my writing "that's what you get in handwritten art" shows that I was already aware that the poster "was done completely by hand." Indeed, I believe that writing about it as "a hand-drawn artwork" in the original posting shows that. Yes, correcting an error in that medium is much more difficult than in any digital format.

I often write "coupla" as a slangy, informal version of "couple of." You can find a few earlier examples on the blog. In other words, it's not a typo; it's a literary affectation.

I hope you enjoy the posters, and am pleased my posting brought the artist together with a happy customer. Which leaves me with nothing else to say but, "You're welcome."