Book 1: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known and loved today as simply The Wizard of Oz, is a tale that has been cherished by readers and listeners throughout the years. This timeless story has inspired Broadway shows, cartoon series, and many films over the past few generations. I hope that this book has inspired your sense of creativity and wonder as much as it has mine.
wizard of oz audio book
Download File: https://0conscomtara.blogspot.com/?tn=2vJjg2
In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 100th birthday, fans are invited to enjoy this archival audiobook, originally recorded in 1993 and newly restored! Listen to the voice of the author as Madeleine L'Engle reads her Newbery Medal-winning novel A Wrinkle in Time.
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!
April is in her 30s and created Good Books And Good Wine. She works for a non-profit. April always has a book on hand. In her free time she can be found binge watching The Office with her husband and toddler, spending way too much time on Pinterest or exploring her neighborhood.
This multicast dramatisation of Arabian Nights: Volume 1 is an Audible Original reenvisioning of three iconic tales - with a twist. Adapted by the great Marty Ross, whose previous audio dramas include Romeo and Jude, Dark Shadows, Doctor Who and Blood and Stone, listeners can expect to hear Sheherezade, Ali Baba & 40 Thieves and Julnar the Sea Born as they've never done before.
I was talking about this book with a couple of people before audible released the Anne Hathaway-narrated version. Is it really in the best interest to have the book narrated by a female? The movie certainly creates a certain expectation and it would be foolish to disregard that expectation without acknowledging the negative criticism sure to come your way. On the other hand, the book is not the movie: The story is told from an omniscient third person POV and the author is a male. Of course, now that the audible version is out, an alternative male-narrated version would have to be a very strong performance indeed, maybe even ground breaking!
This week, the audio book version of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz has made it into the top 50 bestsellers in the Children category. You can legally download or stream this audio book and listen for free at Spotify, Deezer, and in high quality at Audible.
Some years ago, Audible released an unabridged reading by Anne Hathaway as an Audible original. However, they've branched into audio dramas as well. It says Audible Studios is the publisher, so I don't know if it's a company they've put together or one that they fund or what. So now, there's also an audio drama version as an Audible original, which recently became one of the free titles for Audible subscribers to enjoy.
Oz has of course been adapted for audio drama several times. The BBC has adapted it twice, while there were quite a number of short adaptations on children's records, there's been multi-reader audio books that try to do a hybrid approach of audio book and drama, there was Classic Wizard of Oz, the Los Angeles Children's Museum adaptation from 2000, the Monterey Soundworks adaptation, the Big Finish adaptation, Colonial Radio Theater adapted it and the next five Oz books (with Patchwork Girl still reportedly on the way) and most recently, Crossover Adventure Productions' The Chronicles of Oz, which has adapted the first three Oz books in a free but welcome manner. So there's quite a few to compare it to as you're not wanting for choice of audio dramatizations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Probably those last two are my preferred audio adaptations that I've listened to the most.
So, there's this new version, which runs over four hours long. It pretty much captures each episode from the book with a lot of the dialogue left intact, sometimes being rewritten, sometimes embellished, but very often expanded.
And I do mean expanded. There's no narrator and the characters talk a lot. Way more than they should. The adaptation is by Paul Magrs, who's penned a number of Doctor Who audio dramas as well as his own original fiction. Characters will talk and talk and talk, dragging out scenes for far longer than they need to be.
One needs to remember with Oz that Baum loved the theater and was an actor himself, and much of the dialogue in the Oz books comes from the fact that he got how to have characters communicate. I'm not saying the dialogue in the books stand on their own, but when they're expanded outside of filling in information the narrator isn't saying, it begins to feel tedious.
The story starts right off with Dorothy telling Uncle Henry about the cyclone. Lydia West sounds like a grown woman trying to emulate Judy Garland a bit. (The actress is very private about her life, but believed to be in her mid to late 20s.) The actress is a woman of color, and Uncle Henry sounds like an African-American man, so perhaps this production attempts to make Dorothy and her family people of color, but when you're working in audio only, it can easily get lost. Dorothy's age is also hard to determine. The first slight mention has a Munchkin exaggerate and call her a woman, but she and other characters say that she is a little girl. She doesn't sound like one.
A sudden cyclone appears on a Kansas prairie and a young girl named Dorothy is carried off to a place called Munchkinland in the Land of Oz. If she ever wants to go home again, the great wizard of Oz is the only person who could help her. 2ff7e9595c
Comments