The Road to Oz

Oz Series

Author: L. Frank Baum

Book 5 in the Oz series

Pages: 280

Published: 1909

Age: 9+

When the Shaggy Man asks Dorothy the way to Butterfield, Kansas, she's glad to help him. But she soon finds that not only are they lost: they are in the land of Oz. Together they travel to the Emerald City, where the Princess Ozma has the power to send them home once again.

About the Oz Series

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.