One-Star Revue: THE WIZARD OF OZ

The other day, I was unhappily subjected to a trailer for "Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return," an animated sequel to "The Wizard of Oz" featuring your favorite actors doing a cash-grab in return for a few weeks in a recording booth. (Bernadette Peters? Oliver Platt? For shame.) The actual Oz books are a good deal weirder than the first (and eventual movie adaptation) but are a useful precursor to this century's fantasy franchises: L. Frank Baum, who eventually wrote 13 sequels to THE WIZARD OF OZ, was an odd duck but he had a Piers Anthonyesque approach to world-building: He just kept expanding and heck if anyone got in his way. Now that Dorothy et al are in the public domain, anyone can write his or her own "Wizard of Oz" sequel, and the fact that I feel strangely protective of these characters is no doubt a remnant left over from my own childhood. But not everyone enjoyed THE WIZARD OF OZ, and some hilariously failed to do so:

• "I think it has too much old talk in it."
• "I thought it was boaring [sic] it was not realistic or creative like the movie."
• "I hate it and it was terrible so I really hates it so good luck trying to read this book." Only including this one because it was from user "1dfan." Well, I can't get through a One Direction song without experiencing internal distress, so we're even now.
• "Why do you make it so stupid. I was going to put it down, but it got interesting then it got boring. Dorothy had red shoes not silver ones. They didn't adventure through the forest at the end or the kingdom of the winkies, or the field mice. So make a better book that goes with the movie." Yes, sir and/or ma'am.
• "Any books with this type of cover is bad." 
• "Awesome book I love it I can not stop myself from reading it over and over again get this book." This is one of several very positive Amazon reviews whose writers filed them under one star. Not sure why the concept was so confusing. 
• "Haven't used this yet but..."