Rinkitink in Oz, by L. Frank Baum (a review by Calvin)

Fun, imaginitive, a bit of good vs. evil with good winning the fight, Rinkitink in Oz is a standard Baum fairy story, but the only reason it's an Oz book is that Dorothy and the Wizard make a cameo appearance in the last chapter or so, and the new Nome King, too. I think Calvin missed our old friends, but he's so captivated by these books in general that I'm not sure he remembered he missed them until they showed up at the end. Another Baum that gets an A+ from us.

The Scarecrow of Oz (review by Calvin)

This was a great return to the magical Land of Oz. I was a little worried before we started because the last book was a disappointment and I thought maybe the remainder of the series might follow that pattern, but The Scarecrow of Oz brought back all the things I originally loved about these stories. As usual, Calvin gave it an A plus.

Tik-Tok of Oz (our reviews)

We finished our most recent in the Oz series yesterday, The Tik-Tok of Oz. I have to say that this was my least favorite of the series so far. It fits in just fine, but it borrowed heavily from previous books, to the point that I felt it was just a rewriting or a recombination of earlier stories he'd already written. That being said, all the stories are really formulaic and that might be part of what makes them so enjoyable to the younger set—they know what to expect, and they are all equally fantastical and enjoyable. Calvin, for one, was not bothered by repetition.

Since I thought the book was somewhat of a bust I think my favorite part is Calvin's journal entry. When we started with this half a year ago I was spelling everything for him and still helping him form letters and the sentence structure to get his ideas out. He wrote this entry entirely by himself while I was running on the treadmill. I am completely in love with it.

The Road to Oz, by L. Frank Baum (a review by Calvin)

We have read other books since we started this series. Really. In fact we read a multitude of other picture books and have also perused The Hobbit in graphic novel form, but we keep migrating back to Baum. You've heard me rave about these before. Here is Calvin's review of The Road to Oz, by L. Frank Baum.

The Bob Books

Reading is something we've done an extra lot of as of late. Of course we always read a lot, but the difference is that now about half of that reading is being done by Calvin himself. At this point he is now reading a variety of books we have in the house, mostly the easy readers of yesteryear, like Hop on Pop, by Dr. Suess, or Snow, by P.D. Eastman, but before he started working his way through the longer books we started with books intended to teach reading and phonics. It was on a trip to the library a couple of weeks ago that he first asked to bring home a set of phonics books and I spent some times perusing the collection there, only to be disappointed by the number of books more interested in selling a branded character (like Clifford, Bob the Builder, or Thomas) than teaching the skill of reading, but there was one collection that was entirely devoid of that commercial culture so we brought it home. Turns out we were pretty happy with that selection. The Bob Books we had (and clearly we didn't try all of them) were a good workout for the new reader and even had somewhat interesting stories. I'm sure I was slightly drugged by the joy of watching my son discover reading, but these books were actually enjoyable for both Calvin and for me. Win win.