A review by cophoff
The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum

5.0

I love all the Oz books, so loving this one wasn't a surprise. But this is a deeper, darker Oz than the earlier books. The reader is reminded of the Tin Woodman's somewhat gruesome past, and also meets his severed head, on the tinsmith's shelf, and many of his former body parts, now glued back together, to create a different being. And, if these anomolies are not enough, there is definitely a thinly veiled question here about the makeup of a soul, and the value of a body. Which, after all, is the real Tin Woodman, Nick Chopper? Is it the head with the brain, the body with the heart, or the new tin creation with the memories (or is it the soul?), the creature we have all become accustomed to? There is really a lot of symbolism and imagery in all of Baum's work, much of it being politically motivated by the situations of the early 20th century, but this is perhaps the most striking, and the most demanding, of them all.