The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
One of the true classics of American literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has stirred the imagination of young and old alike for more than a century. Originally published in 1900, it was the first truly American fairy-tale, as Baum crafted a wonderful fantasy out of such familiar items as a cornfield scarecrow, a mechanical woodman, and a humbug wizard who used old-fashioned hokum to express that universal theme, "there's no place like home."
Follow the adventures of young Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, as their Kansas house is swept away by a cyclone and they find themselves in a strange land called Oz. Here she meets the Munchkins and joins the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion on an unforgettable journey to the Emerald City, where lives the all-powerful Wizard of Oz.
About the Oz Series
Books in series order
- 1.The Wonderful Wizard of Oz(1900)
- 2.The Marvelous Land of Oz(1904)
- 3.Ozma of Oz(1907)
- 4.Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz(1908)
- 5.The Road to Oz(1909)
- 6.The Emerald City of Oz(1910)
- 7.The Patchwork Girl of Oz(1913)
- 8.Tik-Tok of Oz(1914)
- 9.The Scarecrow of Oz(1915)
- 10.Rinkitink in Oz(1916)
- 11.The Lost Princess of Oz(1917)
- 12.The Tin Woodman of Oz(1918)
- 13.The Magic of Oz(1919)
- 14.Glinda of Oz(1920)
- +Little Wizard Stories of Oz(1913)
- +The Woggle-Bug Book(1905)
Reading age: 9+ years
This series should be read in order.
The Oz books by L. Frank Baum form a series of classic children's fantasy novels that begins with the most famous of Baum's creations, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and relate the fictional history of the Land of Oz and its colourful cast of inhabitants.
Oz was created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen full-length Oz books. Even as he lived, Baum was styled as "the Royal Historian of Oz" to emphasise the concept that Oz is an actual place. The illusion created was that characters such as Dorothy and Princess Ozma related their adventures in Oz to Baum themselves, by means of wireless telegraph.
Aside from the fourteen books that Baum wrote, many other authors over the past century have contributed to the canon of Oz. These include nineteen novels by Ruth Plumly Thompson, three by John R. Neill, two by Jack Snow and two by Rachel R. Cosgrove. In 2005, the Baum Trust authorised Sherwood Smith to create four more official Oz sequels, two of which have been published to date. For the purpose of authenticity, only the first fourteen Oz novels originally penned by Baum himself have been included in our list.