The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written solely to pleasure children today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.” [L. Frank Baum]
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a classic of children’s literature. Disney Pictures partially adapted its narrative world into the famous film with Judie Garland, which helped creating an imaginary universe that has strong connotations even nowadays.
Starting from these premises, together with Olimpia Zagnoli we decided to move completely away from them, and tried creating an entirely different imaginary world, with minimalist illustrations, repetitive patterns, and geometrical shapes that are influenced by rationalism.
To strengthen the illustrations even further, we chose a very limited colour palette: emerald green (i.e. the colour that represents the symbol of the story), black, and gold, i.e. the ultimate “magical” element.
Sometimes the page layout follows a regular structure, sometimes it’s disrupted by the illustrations. For example, when the cyclone lifts Dorothy’s house, it carries away the words on the page as well. Or when the flock of crows is coming to peck the poor Scarecrow, they fly into the paragraphs and upset them.
This book launches the Classic Reimagined series, published by Rockport Publishers.
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