The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Introduction Chapter I. The Cyclone Chapter II. The Council with the Munchkins Chapter III. How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow Chapter IV. The Road Through the Forest Chapter V. The Rescue of the Tin Woodman Chapter VI. The Cowardly Lion Chapter VII. The Journey to the Great Oz Chapter VIII. The Deadly Poppy Field Chapter IX. The Queen of the Field Mice Chapter X. The Guardian of the Gates Chapter XI. The Emerald City of Oz Chapter XII. The Search for the Wicked Witch Chapter XIII. The Rescue Chapter XIV. The Winged Monkeys Chapter XV. The Discovery of Oz, the Terrible Chapter XVI. The Magic Art of the Great Humbug Chapter XVII. How the Balloon Was Launched Chapter XVIII. Away to the South Chapter XIX. Attacked by the Fighting Trees Chapter XX. The Dainty China Country Chapter XXI. The Lion Becomes the King of Beasts Chapter XXII. The Country of the Quadlings Chapter XXIII. Glinda The Good Witch Grants Dorothy’s Wish Chapter XXIV. Home Again

Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar—except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.