Ozma of Oz

L. Frank Baum
1907

rating: good

plot: Dorothy accidentally returns to Oz only to find that she and her newly accumulated odd-ball friends must save the new child-ruler, Ozma, from the underground lair of the Nome King.



It really doesn't help my case for knowing how to read when the first book on my list is a children's book. But this was the first book I read this year and I am far too meticulous to post the books out of order.

Ozma of Oz is the third book in Baum's Oz series (the first being, of course, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). There's a whopping 14 books in the series. I read all of them when I was a kid. If you are a big fan of the Julie Garland movie, I recommend you approach the Oz books with caution, as they are not written in Technicolor. If you are a big fan of the Broadway musical Wicked, I recommend you do not read the Oz books at all because you are clearly the type of person who is only satisfied when literature is butchered to the point where they bring the witch back from the dead in the end. For pete's sake. (Oh yeah...spoiler alert.) However, if you enjoyed the movie Return to Oz, you should read the whole series because that movie is a dead-on interpretation. (The movie's plot is based on two books: Ozma of Oz and the second book in the series, The Land of Oz.)

The Oz books are frankly written non-stop adventures. They are page-turners in the same way we all know the Harry Potter books to be page turners. But they in no other way resemble Harry Potter books. If I were to make any comparisons, I would say they are like Discworld meets Dick & Jane.

What you have to remember is that these books were written between 1900 and 1910, back when there really weren’t many novels exclusively for children. The books allow fascinating insight into the behaviors expected from children in that time. Again remembering the publication year, the female characters in the series are surprisingly adventurous and independent. Baum was a great supporter of Women’s Suffrage. While his approach may seem quaint to us now, he exhibits in these books a clear belief of female equality.

If I’m lumping the Oz books together instead of talking about Ozma of Oz it’s because the stories start to run together in my mind. The book is really about Dorothy, not Ozma. This is Dorothy’s first return to oz after she was carried about back to Kansas by the silver slippers. (The second book, The Land of Oz, didn’t feature Dorothy at all.) She befriends a new assortment of odd companions and goes on a new assortment of zany adventures.

I recommend an Oz book if you enjoy fantasy adventure and you’re looking for a quick, fun read. But I recommend reading them in order as the stories build on each other.