The Wizard of Oz, Reimagined by Beloved Illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger

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The Wizard of Oz, Reimagined by Beloved Illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger

by Maria Popova

An enchanting and original vision for L. Frank Baum’s classic ode to wonderment and joy.

As a lover of vintage children’s books, especially ones that have elicited exquisite illustrated reimaginings over the years, I was thrilled to come upon an extraordinary 1996 edition of The Wizard of Oz (public library), illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger — one of the most remarkable, original, and imaginative illustrators of our time, whose soft yet irreverent aesthetic calls to mind the sensitivity of Maurice Sendak, the visual poetics of Sophie Blackall, and the conceptual eeriness of Edward Gorey, and yet is gasp-gorgeous and decidedly distinctive in its own right.

More than anything, Zwerger’s unusual vision of Emerald City and its four legendary travelers makes L. Frank Baum’s original 1900 introduction to the book, an ode to wonderment and joy as an antidote to morality tales, sing all the more mellifluously:

Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

Though Zwerger’s The Wizard of Oz now rests in the bittersweet cemetery ofout-of-print gems, surviving used copies can still be found online and at some libraries.