THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ COOK BOOK

This is not the scholarly re-creation we had in Barbara Walker's Little House Cookbook (1979). Here, the recipes' connection to the Oz stories (and to the Oz quotes sprinkled throughout) is arbitrary and gimmicky--""keyed to color"" with blue ingredients used in Munchkin country, green in Emerald City, etc., and ""keyed"" to incidents and characters through such titles as ""haystack sandwiches,"" ""Cowardly Lion Quivering Gelatin,"" and so on. The emphasis is on plain old-fashioned fare that might have been Kansas treats (strawberry shortcake) or staples (bran muffins, potato pancakes, doughnuts, pot roast, chicken and dumplings), as well as some less natural ones Aunt Em might have cooked had she held truck with such new-fangled items as miniature marshmallows and canned shoestring potatoes. Oddly, a few recipes betray Spanish accents, though the names have been changed. (Maybe it's the seafood with saffron that inspired Dorothy's famous ""Golly, Tote, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."") Directions tend to be scanty, and children have to check an appended glossary for the meaning of shortening, scald, grate, and cream (used as a verb)--and there are some cavalier calls for such now-expensive ingredients as wild rice and veal steak (the latter used, in some kind of reverse display, to make ""humbug chicken legs""). The borrowed Denslow illustrations might sell this, and selective use can give kids a facsimile of Dorothy's likely diet, but the recipes aren't written for the eight-year-old audience suggested by the book's appearance.