The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

by L. Frank Baum

This book is dedicated to my good friend and comrade, my wife, L.F.B.

Contents

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

Introduction

Folklore, legends, myths, and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages. Every healthy child has a natural love for stories that are fantastic, marvelous, and clearly not real. The winged fairies created by writers like Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to children's hearts than almost anything else made by humans.

Still, the old-fashioned fairy tale, after serving readers for generations, can now be thought of as "old-fashioned" in a children's library. The time has come for a new kind of "wonder tale," one that leaves out the usual genies, dwarfs, and fairies—along with all the frightening and gruesome events that older authors used to teach a scary lesson in every story. Modern schooling already teaches children right from wrong, so today's child mainly wants entertainment from a wonder tale and is happy to skip the unpleasant parts.

With this in mind, I wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz purely to please the children of today. It tries to be a modern fairy tale—one that keeps all the wonder and joy of the old stories but leaves out the heartache and nightmares.

—L. Frank Baum, Chicago, April 1900

Chapter I: The Cyclone

Dorothy lived on the wide, flat farmland of Kansas with her Uncle Henry, a farmer, and her Aunt Em, his wife. Their house was small, since the wood to build it had to be hauled by wagon from many miles away. The whole house was really just one room, made of four walls, a floor, and a roof. Inside sat a rusty stove, a cupboard for dishes, a table, a few chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em shared a big bed in one corner, while Dorothy had a small bed in another.

The house had no attic and no basement—except for a small pit dug into the ground called a cyclone cellar. A cyclone is a powerful, spinning windstorm strong enough to destroy any building in its path, so the family could hide in this cellar for safety. You reached it through a trapdoor in the floor, which opened onto a ladder leading down into the dark little space.

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked out, she saw nothing but flat gray prairie stretching in every direction, all the way to the edge of the sky. Not a single tree or house interrupted the view. The sun had baked the plowed dirt into a cracked gray crust. Even the grass wasn't green—the sun had scorched the tips of the tall blades until they matched the gray of everything else. The house itself had once been painted, but the sun had blistered the paint and the rain had washed it away, leaving it as dull and gray as the land around it.

When Aunt Em first came to live there, she had been a young, pretty woman. But the sun and wind had changed her too. They had drained the sparkle from her eyes, leaving them a tired gray, and had faded the red from her cheeks and lips until they were gray as well. She had grown thin and bony, and she never smiled anymore. When Dorothy—who was an orphan—first arrived, Aunt Em was so startled by the little girl's laughter that she would gasp and clutch her chest every time she heard it. Even now, she looked at Dorothy with surprise that the child could find anything funny at all.

Uncle Henry never laughed either. He worked hard from sunup to sundown and didn't seem to know what joy felt like. He, too, looked gray, from his long beard down to his rough boots, and he rarely spoke, wearing a serious, solemn expression most of the time.

It was Toto who kept Dorothy laughing and stopped her from turning as gray as everything else around her. Toto was not gray at all—he was a little black dog with long, silky fur and small dark eyes that sparkled with fun on either side of his funny little nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him and loved him with all her heart.

But today, they weren't playing. Uncle Henry sat on the front step, staring worriedly at the sky, which looked even grayer than usual. Dorothy stood in the doorway holding Toto, looking up at the sky too, while Aunt Em washed dishes inside.

From far off in the north, they heard a low moaning wind, and Uncle Henry and Dorothy watched the tall grass ripple in waves ahead of the coming storm. Then a sharp whistling sound rose from the south, and when they turned to look that way, they saw the grass rippling from that direction as well.

Suddenly, Uncle Henry jumped to his feet.

"There's a cyclone coming, Em!" he shouted to his wife. "I'll go check on the animals." Then he dashed toward the sheds where the cows and horses were kept.

Aunt Em dropped what she was doing and rushed to the door. One look at the sky told her how much danger they were in.

"Quick, Dorothy!" she cried. "Run for the cellar!"

Toto leaped out of Dorothy's arms and hid under the bed, and the girl turned to grab him. Aunt Em, terrified, threw open the trapdoor and climbed down the ladder into the dark little cellar. Dorothy finally caught Toto and started to follow her aunt, but halfway across the room, the wind let out a tremendous shriek. The house shook so violently that Dorothy lost her balance and dropped to the floor.

Then something very strange happened.

The house spun around two or three times and slowly lifted into the air. Dorothy felt as though she were rising inside a hot air balloon.

The winds from the north and the south had collided exactly where the house stood, making it the very center of the cyclone. Usually, the air stays calm in the middle of a cyclone—but the powerful push of wind from every side lifted the house higher and higher, all the way to the top of the storm. There it stayed, carried for miles and miles, as easily as if it were nothing more than a floating feather.

It was pitch dark, and the wind howled terribly around her, but Dorothy realized the ride was actually fairly smooth. After the first few spins—and one moment when the house tilted sharply—she felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle.

Toto, however, hated it. He raced around the room, barking loudly, while Dorothy sat still on the floor and waited to see what would happen next.

At one point, Toto wandered too close to the open trapdoor and tumbled in. At first Dorothy feared she had lost him for good. But then she spotted one of his ears poking up through the hole—the strong air pressure below was actually holding him in place so he couldn't fall any farther. She crawled to the opening, grabbed Toto by the ear, and pulled him back into the room, then shut the trapdoor firmly so nothing like that could happen again.

Hour after hour passed, and slowly Dorothy's fear faded, though she felt very lonely, and the shrieking wind nearly deafened her. At first she had worried that the house might come crashing down and shatter into pieces. But as time went on and nothing terrible happened, she stopped worrying and decided to simply wait calmly to see what would come. Eventually, she crawled across the swaying floor to her bed and lay down, with Toto curling up beside her.

Despite the rocking house and the howling wind, Dorothy soon closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.

Chapter II: The Council with the Munchkins

She woke up with a sudden, hard jolt—so sudden that if she hadn't been lying on a soft bed, she might have gotten hurt. As it was, the shock knocked the breath out of her, and she wondered what had happened. Toto pressed his cold little nose against her face and whimpered sadly. Dorothy sat up and realized the house had stopped moving. It wasn't dark anymore, either—bright sunshine poured in through the window, filling the little room with light. She jumped out of bed, and with Toto right behind her, ran to open the door.

The little girl gasped in amazement at what she saw, her eyes growing wider and wider at the wonderful sight before her.

The cyclone had set the house down very gently—gently, at least, for a cyclone—in the middle of a country of incredible beauty. Patches of lovely green grass stretched all around, dotted with tall, graceful trees loaded with rich, delicious-looking fruit. Banks of magnificent flowers bloomed everywhere, and birds with rare, brightly colored feathers sang and fluttered among the branches and bushes. Not far away, a small stream rushed and sparkled between green banks, its murmuring sound very welcome to a little girl who had spent her whole life on dry, gray prairie land.

While she stood there gazing at the strange, beautiful scenery, she noticed a group of the oddest-looking people she had ever seen walking toward her. They weren't as tall as the grown-ups she was used to, but they weren't tiny either—in fact, they stood about as tall as Dorothy, who was a fairly big girl for her age, even though these people looked, by their appearance, to be many years older.

Three were men, and one was a woman, and they were all dressed strangely. They wore round hats that rose to a small point about a foot above their heads, with little bells along the brims that jingled sweetly whenever they moved. The men's hats were blue, while the woman's hat was white. She also wore a white gown that fell in pleats from her shoulders, sprinkled all over with little stars that sparkled in the sunlight like diamonds. The men wore blue outfits to match their hats, along with polished boots topped with a deep blue cuff. Dorothy guessed the men were about as old as Uncle Henry, since two of them had beards. But the little woman looked much older still—her face was covered in wrinkles, her hair was nearly white, and she walked with a stiff, careful step.

When these strangers got close to the house where Dorothy stood in the doorway, they stopped and whispered to each other, as though afraid to come any closer. Finally, the little old woman walked up to Dorothy, bowed low, and said in a sweet voice:

"You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are so grateful to you for killing the Wicked Witch of the East and setting our people free from her control."

Dorothy listened to this speech in confusion. What could the little woman possibly mean, calling her a sorceress and saying she had killed the Wicked Witch of the East? Dorothy was just an innocent, harmless little girl who had been swept many miles from home by a cyclone—she had never killed anything in her whole life.

But the little woman clearly expected some kind of answer, so Dorothy said hesitantly, "That's very kind of you, but I think there's been some mistake. I haven't killed anything."

"Your house did, at least," the little old woman replied with a laugh, "and that amounts to the same thing. Look!" she said, pointing toward the corner of the house. "There are her two feet,