A couple weeks ago, I was doing a Google search for something relating to Captain Salt in Oz—Ozamaland, maybe?—and ending up finding a neat drawing of the book's principal characters on some guy's blog: Tandy, King Ato, and Captain Salt riding Nikobo the hippopotamus as she swam through a sea forest, Roger the Royal Read Bird flying overhead, along with a winged fish.
My then-four-year-old son was close at hand, and demanded I print the picture out so he could color it, which he did enthusiastically. (The past few months he has declared on many occasions himself to be an "artist.") After doing so, he asked if he could do another Oz coloring page, so I poked around the site a bit more. It belonged to a guy named Shawn P. Maldonaldo, who illustrated a number of modern small-press Oz books, and occasionally posted his work to a blog. Son One got very into it for a few days, and we went through a lot of them. A particular highlight was his set of Ozma paper dolls; Son One had never done a paper doll before and got a big kick out of them (and Son Two asked for his own set to color and cut out too).
I was a bit disappointed to see the site hadn't been updated since 2014; I went looking for the guy on facebook to see if he'd transitioned over there or something, but had little luck in tracking him down.
So, a week later I open the newest issue of The Baum Bugle and read an obituary for him; he died earlier this year. Rest in peace, Shawn Maldonaldo; you provided a few hours' good fun for my Oz-loving son (and me).
 |
| Son One's coloring of Polychrome |
 |
| My own coloring of Jack Pumpkinhead |
No comments:
Post a Comment