Oz is following me

So last week I started reading the book The Wizard of Oz. I have never seen the movie or Sound of Music, so I thought it was finally time to see why the story had lasted over 100 years. I also learned that there are 14 books about Oz, but it was only the first one that was made into a movie and a musical. The book I have is actually a collection of three of the books of Oz: The Wizard of Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, and Glinda of Oz. Since I had a total of 8 hours on trains to look forward to the past weekend I decided that I'd make that book my train entertainment.

The Oz-books were great. It was obvious that they were written for children, but they were really well made. It was also obvious that Baum took a lot of inspiration from Alice in Wonderland. There are only two things that bother me. In the first book, The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman wants a heart so that he can remember how to love the girl he used to love before he was made of tin. But when he gets his heart he doesn't go back to the girl (he also assumes that the girl is still waiting for him), but instead he becomes the Emperor of the Winkies and builds a castle in the West. Dafuq? The other thing is that in the second book, The Emerald City of Oz, Dorothy is travelling around Oz and meeting a lot of interesting people. One of them are the Cuttenclip people. They are all paper dolls. One of the people in Dororthy's company asks what the paper doll people does when it's raining and they answer that the witch Glinda the Good cast a spell so that it doesn't rain in their country. Two paragraphs later Baum claims that it's always nice weather in Oz. So how would anyone in Oz know what rain is?

While I was reading the book I started to feel followed by Oz. About halfway through the book this picture shows up on my Facebook wall:

And Once Upon a Time started again only recently and they introduced who? The Wicked Witch of the West and Flying Monkeys. I'm prepared to see a lot more from Oz in the coming episodes of Once Upon a Time. Looking through the promotional pictures on Once Upon a Time's Facebook page there'll be a whole lot of Oz elements coming round soon.

Oz is following me around. But I don't think I mind. It's kind of like being followed around by Wonderland - totally awesome.