While not as dark as the last book, The Road to Oz has many similarities to Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Again, our little heroine unintentionally sets off on a journey during which she meets a host of new characters, experiences a few easily-overcome challenges, and ends up in Oz. This time, though, there wasn't really any conflict and only one encounter with a malicious opponent on their travels. The Shaggy Man was actually a bit creepy at the beginning (my kids have been taught to run and find a parent if an adult they don't know asks them for directions!), though, of course, he turned out all right. Several of the new characters just stuck in my craw. Button Bright was just annoying...If he'd said "don't know" one more time I might have reached through the pages of the book and throttled him. And what, pray tell, was Polychrome's purpose (besides encouraging anorexia)? She was about as engaging as a piece of lint - a very pretty, variegated piece of lint, to be sure, but still...blah.

With these last two books it really seems that Mr. Baum was frustrated in his desires to write something other than Oz books, so he decided to set the books elsewhere and just have the characters end up in Oz so he could slap those two letters on the cover of the book and make money while trying to branch out into other "fairylands". I enjoyed reading all these when I was a kid, and my kids are loving them now, but as an adult, they're wearing a bit thin.

And I felt awfully bad for the poor Musicker, not getting an invite to Ozma's party. No one, in a land where kindness and generosity are supposed to reign supreme, was even the tiniest bit kind to the poor guy who can't help making music.

For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.