Shelf Control: The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

Shelf Control is a feature where bloggers pick an unread book from our shelves and talk about it a little. It's supposed to be a Wednesday thing but I have French Movie Mercredi on Wednesdays already, so. Shelf Control is hosted at BookshelfFantasies.com.

 This week's book is The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. You know this one.

How and when I got it:  

 

I bought this at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass., in May 2012, soon after it came out (I think) in this luxurious Penguin Threads edition.

Why I Want to Read It:

I have always been curious about The Wizard of Oz and when this beautiful edition came out I couldn't resist. Not that I even tried.

Penguin Threads was a series Penguin did for which they commissioned special embroidery cover art. Other titles in the series were Black Beauty, Emma, Little Women, and The Secret Garden. I bought The Wizard because I hadn't read it yet; I also bought The Secret Garden, because it's a favorite of mine. One fun thing is that if you open the cover, you see the back of the work, like you're turning the fabric itself over to the "wrong side" to see all that embroidery. The covers are also lightly textured so you get that experience of touching the stitches, almost.