Mimic

A beautifully illustrated book. Accurate and colorful. My class of preschoolers related to it wonderfully, using it as a guide for their own Yoga poses. They invented several and we took pictures to add to this stunning book. This Yoga work interested and calmed some of my more challenging students. Well worth the investment of money and time. Highly recommend.

This book is *truly* worthwhile. I took it out from the library (along with a number of other children's yoga books) and found it superior to the rest.

It contains very clear pictures of an object/animal on one page, alonng with a brief comment/question to ask a child, and the other has a child in a similar pose, wearing similar coloured clothing.

There is also suggestions for yoga poses for various aliments, headache, etc.

I am on a *tight* budget, but ordered this book after my first reading of it. What better recommendation do you need?

Buy this book, and everyone at work will think you are cool.

This is a fabulous book visually; with large color photos of the animal/object and children in the pose. It is also full of new information and poses created by the author. It won a national award for one of the best children's books of 1998 from the School Library Journal. I highly recommend it!!

Publisher Reilly & Lee Co. consistently had great luck in discovering new authors to carry on the Oz chronicle after L. Frank Baum's passing. Ruth Plumly Thompson, who followed Baum, wrote 19 smoothly written, strong, and inventive titles. Longtime Oz illustrator John R. Neill subsequently authored three, one of which, The Wonder City Of Oz (1940), is a genuine classic in the series.

The Magical Mimics In Oz (1946), the first of two books by Jack Snow, was yet another success. While its story is derivative of several past Oz tales, Snow confidently took the driver's seat when he took up his pen; his vision of Oz is spirited, playful, and precise. Most noticeably, Snow gave Dame Nature a prominent role in his conception of the Oz utopia. Princess Ozana's Story Blossom Garden, for example, is extensively and lovingly described: "Flowers of every variety grew in profusion. Save for the mossy paths that wound through the garden, there was not a spot on the ground that was without blossoming plants. As for the pond, it was like a small sea of lovely blossoming water plants. At the edge of the pond, Dorothy noted three graceful white swans, sleeping in the shade of a large flowering bush that grew at the edge of the pond and trailed its blossoms into the water. The air was sweet with the perfume of thousands and thousands of flowers." For the fairy Ozana, lonely for the companionship of living things on her mountaintop home were she stands perpetual guard over the evil Mimics, has created a garden of vocal, story-telling flowers. The perfumes of the flowers, Ozana tells Dorothy and the Little Wizard, are the essence of their souls. Snow lovingly spends an entire chapter on the Story Blossom Garden, and, though the plants have been awakened to a new degree of life by Ozana's magic, Snow makes it clear that nature, in and of itself, is majestic and miraculous.

In a later chapter, Toto, Betsy Bobbins, and Hank the Mule take a stroll into the meadows surrounding the Emerald City to pick flowers and enjoy a picnic. Snow writes, "there were few things Toto liked better than to get out in the country and frolic in the fields." Jack Kramer's illustrations of their outing, and of Toto basking in the sun, underscore Snow's Eden-like conception of the simple outdoors. Unlike the depictions of nature in the Baum and Neill books, which characterize Ozian nature as a somewhat brittle facsimile of nature as readers know it, Snow's natural world, like Thompson's, breathes, sings, and emits an intrinsic magic which has nothing to do with sorcery. Thus Oz, in the Thompson and Snow titles, is a kind of Arcadia, where nature in its pure state is a powerful, fundamental source of joy and inspiration.

The Magical Mimics In Oz has been called 'dark' by some, largely because its story sees the Emerald City conquered and its royal family enchanted, imprisoned, and threatened with unpleasant fates. Werewolf-like Queen Ra, the evil leader of the protean Mimics, taunts her bound captives with her plans for their immediate futures: Scraps the Patchwork Girl is to be converted into a pin cushion, the Glass Cat melted down and rolled into marbles, Billina the Yellow Hen roasted for dinner, the Woozy chopped into building blocks, and Tik Tok eternally disassembled and reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle for Ra's amusement. The Scarecrow, who vocally leads the opposition, is simply to be burned to a cinder. But these threats are clearly paper tigers and bullying threats, more amusing and startling than cause for genuine alarm, as the Magical Mimics In Oz, like the Thompson and Neill chronicles, is a fun and entertaining book without a genuinely darker subtext.

In fact, Baum's own The Tin Woodman Of Oz (1918), with its lengthy focus on actual human dismemberment, is by leaps and bounds the more unsettling story. In that book's color cover illustration, there is red blood on the edge of the Woodman's axe; and the Scarecrow, larking about, sings, "to cut me don't hurt, for I've no blood to squirt." Fans of the Baum titles have historically failed to acknowledge that Baum's continual use of the adjective "meat" (rather than 'flesh') to describe his human and animal characters might be unsettling to small children, for whom consumption of meat is likely a part of their everyday lives.

Snow's characterizations of the Oz royal family are beautifully realized throughout. The Magical Mimics In Oz, more than any other Oz title, regardless of author, is vastly inclusive: Ozma, Glinda, Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, and the Little Wizard are actively present, but so are Professor Wooglebug, the Sawhorse, the Tin Woodman, Tik Tok, the Hungry Tiger, gate keeper Omby Amby, Billina, Aunt Em, Cap'n Bill, Ojo, the Woozy, Button Bright, Uncle Henry, Betsy Bobbin, Hank the Mule, the Cowardly Lion, the Glass Cat, Trot, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Pink Kitten, and Scraps the Patchwork Girl. Even the Frog Man, Dr. Pipt, and Cayke the Cookie Cook get a mention. Sadly, recent Neill creations Number Nine, Jenny Jump, Lucky Bucky, and the Scalawagons are nowhere in evidence. Classic Thompson character Kabumpo the Elegant Elephant is also conspicuously absent.

Snow's evil Mimics of Mount Illuso, literal first cousins to the Phanfasms, while not remarkably original, nonetheless make effective villains; happily, Snow allows the Mimics to accomplish some genuine dirty work instead of merely planning and threatening to. New Snow creations Princess Ozana and living pine puppets Mr. and Mrs. Hi-Lo are cheerful additions to the Oz chronicle. Illustrator Jack Kramer's interesting depiction of Mimic King Umb as a horned, cloven-hoofed man-monster may have put some parental noses out of point in 1946; it's interesting that Snow and Kramer avoid a direct depiction of the historical Devil of Christianity by allowing King Umb only one horn, which juts from his forehead like a unicorn's. Elsewhere, Kramer's illustrations are clearly a loving tribute to Neill. Recommended.

Soem Oz Fans consider this dark, but I personally LOVED it and enjoyed reading it very much. Its based on how Dorothy and the Wizard are taking care of Oz while Ozma and Glinda are away, but the evil Mimic Rulers want to conquer Oz since tehy want revenge on Queen Lurline, who turned Oz into a fairy country ages ago. They trap Dorothy and teh Wizard in a wicked spell, and turn themselves into Dorothy and the Wizard themselves, and try to find Ozma's magic items which could help their tribe to invade Oz and destroy all the people. However, Ozana, the Guardian Fairy of Oz helps Dorothy and the Wizard......but can she help them BEFORE the Mimics find Ozma's spells and before Ozma and Glinda return to Oz? I think it was a thrilling Oz adventure with a wonderful ending. If you like the Oz Books, I recommend this....and infact, I liked the way it was 'dark' for a change......Jack Snow shows us his brilliant imagination and writing skills ion this BRILLIANT Oz Story.....

One of the most boring and unattractive books I have ever read. What an unfortunate idea to give a running commentary on the events rather than let the reader enjoy the events themselves. I often wondered whether I was reading a badly written essay rather than a novel. Instead of a good story about the racial and political complexities of a colonial (and post-colonial) society you get an exercise in style. Self-indulgent sophistication makes this a tedious read. No more Naipaul for me, thankyou.

This book is BRILLIANT. I am from a former West Indian colony and I KNOW that this man KNOWS what he is talking about. This book ROCKED MY EARTH!

This was the first book I read by V.S. Naipaul, and it is by far my favorite of his so far. Although I did not initially think that a book dealing with the post-colonial struggle for identity would interest me, I found it to be so much more than that, and completely enthralling. It is a beautifully written, almost lyrical work that weaves back and forth in time to create a compelling portrait of a character who, to be sure, has somewhat "distasteful" aspects to his personality, as mentioned by other reviewers. However, I did not find the distasteful parts to be gratuitous, but rather added to the reader's sense of the humiliation and dull despair the character wades through, the sense of longing for some kind of greatness and finding himself instead stuck in the muck and mire. The unshakable sense that man was made for nobility and greatness and consequently longs for more, while he is interminably caught up in eddies of revolting, degrading, and pointless behavior. Though the book did not offer much in the way of hope (which I nonetheless most definitely think exists), it provided an eloquent picture of the state of humanity in the face of one man. I definitely recommend this book.