The Lizard of Oz

by Richard Seltzer

When an elementary class sets out on a quest to save the world form disenchantment, their adventures reveal paradoxes of the human mind and ways of awakening the magic within us.

The second edition is online for free at my web site
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/lizardill...

It's a great improvement and will probably never appear in print

Genres: Humor, Fantasy

126 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1974

About the author

Author of two dozen books, I've been editor, novelist, Russian translator, parttime spy, Internet evangelist, and ebook entrepreneur. I've published children's fantasies, historical novels, and pioneering books about how to do business on the Internet. As a spokesperson for Digital Equipment, a tech leader in the early Internet, I saw how consumer choices and business models molded the outcomes we live with today. My latest book, "In Flux," puts AI into context and suggest how we can nudge the future toward either serving us or oppressing us.

I graduated from Yale, with a major in English and went to grad school there in Comparative Literature. At Yale I had creative writing courses with Robert Penn Warren and Joseph Heller.

In my 70s I've finally been able to write what I want when I want, and I've been publishing 2-3 books a year. Most don't fit in established genres and hence agents and editors aren't interested. So I've gone with small and hybrid publishers which makes it difficult to get the attention of traditional reviewers. Now I'm finally getting some recognition, with reviews of three of my books appearing in the same issue of Publishers Weekly (June 9). Another book of mine (One Family) was reviewed in their July 21 issue. And yet another will be reviewed in their Sept. 8 issue. One Family also won the Connecticut Press Club's annual award for best non-fiction book.

My personal web site is seltzerbooks.com My Twitter account is @seltzerbooks

A list of every book I have read since 1958 (over 3500 books) appears at seltzerbooks.com/readall.html

Reviews

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it so of course I think it's great.
FYI -- The second edition is available for free at my website --
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/lizardill...

This version is not in print and probably never will be.
Enjoy.

Richard

This is what reviewers said about the first edition:
"An intriguing and very entertaining little novel" Library Journal
"Carroll and Tolkien have a new companion" Aspect
"A work so saturated that the mind is both stoned with pleasure and alive with wonder" Lancaster Independent Press
"A commentary on our times done delightfully" Philadelphia Bulletin
"A gallery of figments of contemporary culture that could take its place on the library shelf of memory along with classic figures of children's fiction" Valley Advocate

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of mine is no longer available.
It was a collection of my books and stories for kids published in electronic form, on CD.
I would like to remove it from the list of my books on my author page, but I don't know how to do that.

[Halfempty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those experiences that I begin to think was only in my head, except how could I make up such awful puns about potheads at a time when I believed that pots were only for boiling water? So eventually I bought a copy from abebooks.com to see if I was remembering it correctly. I was.

The Lizard of Oz is a ridiculous and entertaining book in which an elementary school class sets off on a quest to fight disenchantment...through 123 handwritten pages of absolutely dreadful puns that go on and on. I laughed when I was a kid, I groaned as an adult, but I still think this book is a precious piece of the 1970s that should be treasured forever.

[Jh6p · Rating 5 out of 5]

Young children will enjoy the ridiculous nonsensical situations. Older readers will enjoy the endless puns. Adults will wrestle with the political and social allegory. It is a rich book that starts out fun and gets a bit preachy at times, but ends with a positive message.

[Aaron White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book was a fun ride down the rabbit yellow brick pothole. It is a fun, re-imagining of several classic stories, told in a wizard of ozish tone, but set in the late sixties, early seventies. It is childish but also tackles some heavy issues. It made me want to pull out the peace-signs, grow my hair out, don the sandals and go for a hippie retreat in the desert to smoke a little something and discuss Plato, Snoopy, the Tao of Homer Simpson and other things.