The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Esther Serra January 19, 2022 No Comments

Set off on the journey to the Land of Oz with Dorothy, Toto Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion!

World literature’s youthful heroine, Dorothy, comes to “Time for Classics” series.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a modern fairy tale with a distinctly American setting, a delightfully levelheaded and assertive heroine, and engaging fantasy characters. Written in 1900, the story became one of the all-time classic of children’s literature.

In this edition by Combel, Iban Barrenetxea masterfully reinterprets some passages that are already part of the history of children’s literary imaginarium. His style is easily identifiable: traditional but with a personal touch, with a strong Anglo-Saxon influence and, above all, influenced by English literature and humor, of which he is a great admirer.

As the expert on L. Frank Baum and the Oz world, Michael Patrick Hearn, says in the foreword:

Dorothy and her three companions were not entirely unknown to Iban Barrenetxea when he was growing up in Elgoibar in Gipuzkoa, the Basque region in Spain. “I am ashamed to confess I did not read The Wizard of Oz as a child,” writes this highly gifted artist. “I suppose that my first encounter was with the 1939 movie and also with the many references and adaptations in cartoons, songs, etc…” He developed clever style of drawing from a vast array of influences over the years. “I admire artists as diverse as Norman Rockwell and Sempé, so different technically but both absolute masters in telling a story visually,” he explains.

[…] His having produced such a splendid suite of pictures for Alice in Wonderland in 2011, it is only Natural that Barrenetxea should now turn to illustrating The Wizard of Oz. Alice in Wonderland was one of Baum’s favorite books of his childhood; and assertive little Dorothy Gale from Kansas owes much to Lewis Carroll’s more prim and proper heroine.