[Illustration]

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 accompanied childhood throughout history, because every healthy child has a natural love for stories that are fantastic, marvelous, and openly unreal. The winged fairies created by Grimm and Andersen have brought more joy to young readers than almost any other work of human imagination.

Still, the traditional fairy tale—having done its job for generations—might now be considered "historical" in a children's library. The time has come for a new kind of "wonder tale," one that drops the stock characters of genies, dwarfs, and fairies, along with the frightening, gruesome episodes older authors used to hammer home a moral lesson. Modern schooling already teaches morality, so today's child looks to wonder tales purely for enjoyment and is happy to do without unpleasant content.

With this in mind, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written for one purpose: to entertain today's children. It aims to be a modernized fairy tale—one that keeps the wonder and delight of the old stories while leaving out the heartache and nightmares.

L. Frank Baum
Chicago, April 1900

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Chapter I: The Cyclone

Dorothy lived on the vast Kansas prairie with Uncle Henry, a farmer, and Aunt Em, his wife. Their house was small, since the lumber to build it had to be hauled by wagon over many miles. Four walls, a floor, and a roof made up a single room, furnished with a rusty cookstove, a cupboard for dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em slept in a large bed in one corner; Dorothy had a small bed in another. There was no attic and no cellar, except for a small pit dug into the ground called a cyclone cellar—a shelter the family could use if one of the powerful whirlwinds common to the region appeared, strong enough to flatten any building it struck. A trap door in the middle of the floor opened onto a ladder leading down into this dark, cramped space.

Standing in the doorway, Dorothy could see nothing in any direction but the flat gray prairie. No tree or house interrupted the wide stretch of land that seemed to touch the sky at every edge. The sun had baked the plowed fields into a hard gray crust, crisscrossed with small cracks. Even the grass had lost its color, scorched gray at the tips like everything else. The house had once been painted, but the sun had blistered it and the rain had washed it away, leaving it as dull and gray as its surroundings.

When Aunt Em first came to live there, she had been young and pretty. But the sun and wind had worn her down over time. They had drained the sparkle from her eyes, leaving them a flat gray; they had faded the color from her cheeks and lips until they, too, looked gray. She had grown thin and gaunt and no longer smiled. When Dorothy—an orphan—first arrived, her laughter had startled Aunt Em so badly that she would gasp and clutch her chest whenever she heard it. Even now, she looked at the girl with a kind of puzzled wonder, unable to understand what there was to laugh about.

Uncle Henry never laughed either. He worked from dawn until dark and seemed to know nothing of joy. Gray from his long beard to his worn boots, he wore a stern, serious expression and rarely spoke.

It was Toto who made Dorothy laugh and kept her from turning as gray as everything around her. Toto himself was not gray at all—he was a small black dog with long, silky fur and small black eyes that sparkled cheerfully on either side of his funny little nose. He played all day, and Dorothy played with him and loved him deeply.

But today there was no playing. Uncle Henry sat on the doorstep, staring anxiously at a sky that looked grayer than usual. Dorothy stood in the doorway with Toto in her arms, watching the sky as well, while Aunt Em washed dishes inside.

From the north, they heard a low moan of wind, and Uncle Henry and Dorothy saw the long grass bend in waves ahead of the coming storm. Then came a sharp whistling sound from the south, and turning that way, they saw the grass rippling from that direction too.

Uncle Henry suddenly stood up.

"There's a cyclone coming, Em," he called to his wife. "I'll go check on the animals." He ran off toward the sheds where the horses and cows were kept.

Aunt Em dropped what she was doing and rushed to the door. One look told her the danger was near.

"Quick, Dorothy!" she screamed. "Get to the cellar!"

Toto leapt from Dorothy's arms and hid under the bed, and the girl went after him. Aunt Em, terrified, threw open the trap door and climbed down the ladder into the small, dark space below. Dorothy finally caught Toto and turned to follow her aunt—but halfway across the room, the wind let out a tremendous shriek, and the house shook so violently that she lost her balance and fell to the floor.

Then something strange happened.

The house spun around two or three times and began rising slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as though she were floating up in a balloon.

The winds from the north and south had collided directly over the house, placing it at the very center of the cyclone. Normally, the air stays calm at the center of such a storm—but the powerful winds pressing in from every side lifted the house higher and higher, until it rode at the very top of the cyclone. There it stayed, carried for miles and miles as effortlessly as a feather drifting on a breeze.

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

Toto, however, hated it. He dashed around the room barking wildly, while Dorothy sat still on the floor, waiting to see what would happen next.

At one point Toto wandered too close to the open trap door and fell in. For a moment, Dorothy feared she had lost him—but then she spotted one of his ears poking up through the opening, held in place by the strong pressure of the rushing air. She crawled to the hole, grabbed him by the ear, and pulled him back into the room, then closed the trap door so nothing like that could happen again.

Hour after hour passed. Slowly, Dorothy's fear faded, though she felt very alone, and the wind shrieked so loudly around her that she nearly went deaf from it. At first she had worried the house might be smashed to pieces once it came back down—but as time passed with nothing terrible happening, she stopped fretting and decided to wait calmly and see what would come. Eventually she crawled across the swaying floor to her bed and lay down, with Toto settling in beside her.

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

Chapter II: The Council with the Munchkins

She woke to a sudden, jarring shock—so hard that had she not been lying on a soft bed, she might have been hurt. As it was, the jolt knocked the breath out of her, and she sat wondering what had happened while Toto pressed his cold little nose into her face, whining anxiously. Dorothy sat up and realized the house had stopped moving. It was no longer dark, either—bright sunlight poured through the window, filling the small room. She jumped out of bed, and with Toto at her heels, ran to open the door.

The little girl gasped in astonishment, her eyes widening at the incredible sight before her.

The cyclone had set the house down—gently, for a cyclone—in the middle of a strikingly beautiful landscape. Lush patches of grass stretched in every direction, dotted with tall trees heavy with rich, inviting fruit. Banks of brilliant flowers bloomed all around, and birds with rare, dazzling feathers sang and darted through the branches and bushes. Not far away, a small brook rushed and sparkled between green banks, its murmur a welcome sound to a girl who had spent so long on the dry, colorless prairie.

As she stood taking in the strange and lovely scene, she noticed a group of the oddest people she had ever seen approaching her. They were not full-sized adults like the people she was used to, but they weren't especially small either—in fact, they stood about as tall as Dorothy herself, though she was a well-grown child for her age. Judging by appearance alone, they seemed many years older than her.

Three were men, and one was a woman, all dressed strangely. They wore round hats that tapered to a small point a foot above their heads, trimmed with little bells that jingled sweetly whenever they moved. The men's hats were blue; the woman's hat was white, and she wore a white gown that fell in pleats from her shoulders, sprinkled with tiny stars that glittered like diamonds in the sunlight. The men wore blue clothing to match their hats, along with polished boots topped with a deep blue cuff. Dorothy guessed the men were about Uncle Henry's age, since two of them had beards. The little woman, though, looked much older—her face was lined with wrinkles, her hair nearly white, and she walked with a stiff, careful gait.

As this group approached the house where Dorothy stood in the doorway, they stopped and murmured among themselves, hesitant to come any closer. Finally, the little old woman stepped forward, bowed low, and said in a gentle voice:

"You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are deeply grateful to you for killing the Wicked Witch of the East and freeing our people from her rule."

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

But the old woman clearly expected an answer, so Dorothy said hesitantly, "You're very kind, but I think there's been some mistake. I haven't killed anything."

"Your house did, at least," the old woman replied with a laugh, "which amounts to the same thing. Look!" She pointed toward the corner of the house. "There are her two feet, still poking out from under that block of wood."

Dorothy looked—and let out a startled cry. Sure enough, just beneath the corner of the great beam supporting the house, two