One of the books that I am reading right now is All Things Oz: The Wonder, Wit, and Wisdom of The Wizard of Oz by Linda Sunshine. It’s a little gift book (about six inches square and maybe two inches thick) filled with images and quotes that have to do with Oz in all of it’s various forms.

Normally, there isn’t much of particular interest to me in little books like this, but this one is intriguing in that it includes a surprising amount of interesting content. It has some of the short stories that are difficult to find, early reviews of the books, and art from the Willard Carroll collection of illustrations and memorabilia which are extremely difficult to see anywhere else. It has the usual pages with short quotes and things like that which are mostly filler, but there’s enough of interest here to keep me turning pages.

The most interesting element for me so far is some of the illustrations, especially ones from out-of-print, non-English editions of the Oz books. I’ve discovered several new-to-me illustrators whose work I absolutely love. My favorite so far is Carla Ruffinelli, an illustrator for the Italian translations from the 1940s who has a beautiful and detailed style that I absolutely love. Too bad I can’t find any of the books themselves for sale anywhere!

I don’t expect this book to shake my world or anything, but it is pretty and filled with fun things and so I am enjoying it a great deal!