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Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Oz #4)

by L. Frank Baum

3.78 · rating details · 2,554 ratings · 124 reviews

During a California earthquake Dorothy falls into the underground Land of the Manaboos where she again meets the Wizard of Oz.

Hardcover, Books of Wonder, 262 pages

Published by HarperCollins (first published 1908)

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Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,956)

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Feb 16, 2009

Carrie rated it

· review of another edition

Not the The Wizard of Oz, but one of the sequels. Have you all ever read the Oz books? Because they are just plain odd. Baum was incredibly imaginative, and could dream up the most outlandish situations, for sure, but the books are a little bit crazy. Anyway, this one starts off in California, where earthquake causes Dorothy, her kitten, a boy named Zeb and a horse named Jim fall into the center of the earth. They land in a mysterious kingdom where they just happen to run into the Wizard (also t...more

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Feb 08, 2012

Shoshana rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: many

Shelves: classics, fantasy, old-favorite

I really like this one. Baum is sometimes hit-or-miss with how interesting the different kinds of people his characters are constantly meeting are (good sentence, Sho), but he is pretty hit in Dorothy and the Wizard. The Mangaboos, the Valley of Vo, the dragonets, and the gargoyles are all neat, although I wish the dragon herself played a bigger role, and I wish we learned more about how the gargoyles came to be and why they fight and imprison all comers, and what they would have done with our f...moreI really like this one. Baum is sometimes hit-or-miss with how interesting the different kinds of people his characters are constantly meeting are (good sentence, Sho), but he is pretty hit in Dorothy and the Wizard. The Mangaboos, the Valley of Vo, the dragonets, and the gargoyles are all neat, although I wish the dragon herself played a bigger role, and I wish we learned more about how the gargoyles came to be and why they fight and imprison all comers, and what they would have done with our friends when they were prisoners.

Anyway, Baum's weird occasional moments of retro-sexism are back, as when Dorothy, Zeb, and their horse and buggy are falling through an earthquake-created giant chasm in the earth and Dorothy loses consciousness whereas "Zeb, being a boy, did not faint." What? He's a boy, so his brain doesn't have coping mechanisms for shock? I mean, what?

On the other hand, Dorothy is still her bizarrely (and awesomely) unflappable self. Once she regains consciousness, she stares around her at the chasm through which they are still falling, and then she "sighed and commenced to breathe easier." She then proceeds to basically coach Zeb through the whole beginning of the adventure as they approach and explore the land of the Mangaboos, laughing at stuff that frightens him, encouraging him to try walking through the air, and generally sharing intrepidity with all she meets. I particularly like the part where she reassures Zeb that they're not in any danger because they are falling so slowly, he responds by saying "We'll never get home again, though!" and she tells him not to worry about things he can't help. "The boy became silent, having no reply to so sensible a speech." Go, D!

We also have a characteristic Baum-style inconsistency (well, a couple, probably, but one that I particularly noticed). When the Wizard finally meets Ozma, she explains to him that Mombi was her grandfather's jailor and her father's jailor and that when Ozma was born Mombi transformed her into a boy. But in The Land of Oz, Mombi says truthfully that the Wizard brought her baby Ozma and "begged [her] to conceal the child"! I mean, this is a change that makes sense - as it shows the Wizard in a pretty villainous light, and by this point in the series he is really supposed to have grown on us - but it's a pretty dramatic and unacknowledged revision!

Another discrepancy that's actually relevant to the storytelling is that in Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and Ozma agree that Ozma will check on Dorothy every Saturday at a certain time to see if she wants to come to Oz; in Dorothy and the Wizard, Dorothy says that Ozma checks on her every day at four. In which case, why in this book and the next and the next doesn't that ever happen? I think the weekly check-in would explain why they go through so many truly dangerous situations without rescue.

But whatevs! I'm glad for my own sake that they have so many adventures, because I enjoy them so thoroughly!(less)

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Oct 08, 2011

Charly-kate rated it

· review of another edition

It's true that L.Frank.Baum's Oz books are weird! They transport you to wonderful worlds that are so out there you just feel completely cut off from reality reading them. That is why i like them. I am a big fan of MGM's 1939 musical adaptation of the wizard of oz, and so when i found out that my mum had an old copy of what i thought was the Wizard of Oz in the attic i was eager to get it out and read. when i found it was not the version i had at first been looking for i was a bit surprised. i h...more

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May 24, 2011

Mimi rated it

· review of another edition

I am loving reading this classic series!

Once again we meet Dorothy as she experiences yet another natural disaster - this time a "Californy" earthquake that sucks her into more magical adventures. This time she is accompanied by her maniacally mischievous kitten, Eureka (who makes the reader long for Toto's company), the rancher boy Zeb and his old cab horse and even the good 'ol humbug Wizard as they travel through the lands inhabited by Mangaboo Vegetable People, Invisible ...more

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Apr 10, 2010

Afsana rated it

· review of another edition

This was an audio and an ok story.

This is the tale of dorothy, jeb, jim and eureka the cat who after an earthquake fall to the middle of the earth and travel through it to find the way home

This is after the other dorothy books (2 of them)

What I find annoying was the writers use of the children, the girl the boy in place of the charaters names. I felt that was strange and out of place esp after we had already been introduced to them

Also the cat ...more

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Feb 28, 2010

Crystal rated it

· review of another edition

Children’s Literature
Crystal Rodriguez
Title: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz Picture Book…Upper
Author: L. Frank Baum
Illustrator: John R. Neill
Place of Publication: New York, New York
Date: 1990 Number of Pages: 256 Grade Level: Upper

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz took me back to when life was simple and a story could be light-hearted and full of make believe. I actually cannot remember the last time I read a book with such charm and innocence. I...more

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Nov 08, 2011

Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) rated it

Shelves: oz, childrens_teens_fiction

Dorothy once again ends up in the land of Oz because of a natural disaster. This time it isn't a storm at sea or a tornado. This time the ground literally opens at her feet from an earthquake and down she tumbles. She was on the way with her new kitten Eureka to meet up with her Uncle at his Brother-in-Laws ranch in California after the long trip back from Australia when Dorothy, her cousin Zeb, and the horse and buggy went a tumbling down. And they tumble and tumble, falling far but apparently ...moreDorothy once again ends up in the land of Oz because of a natural disaster. This time it isn't a storm at sea or a tornado. This time the ground literally opens at her feet from an earthquake and down she tumbles. She was on the way with her new kitten Eureka to meet up with her Uncle at his Brother-in-Laws ranch in California after the long trip back from Australia when Dorothy, her cousin Zeb, and the horse and buggy went a tumbling down. And they tumble and tumble, falling far but apparently not increasing in speed. They seem to be slowing down. A weird fairy world appears below them illuminated by multicolored suns where all the buildings are glass and gravity seems far more flexible. Also as it's a fairy world Jim the horse pulling the buggy and Eureka soon start chatting away. The people whom they descend on aren't at all pleased with their arrival. The Mangaboos quickly take the trespassers off to their wizard when whom should appear above? Dorthy's own wonderful wizard of Oz!

The Wizard has good timing and not only saves them all from the Mangaboos' wizard, but performs some wonderful humbug magic with nine cute little piglets, that Eureka thinks looks decidedly tasty. The Mangaboos are a strange and cold people, it's like they have no blood, which it turns out they don't, being vegetables! They soon revolt and throw the motley crew out of their land, wherein their true adventure begins, travelling through a land of invisible people where invisible bears are there, oh my. Wooden gargoyles and dragonettes all block the path on their way out of the center of the earth. Luckily when all seems lost, the deus ex machina of Oz swings fully into action and the wizard returns to the land he belongs in.

Looking back on this book I have this odd memory of hating it. Maybe that belief let me free up my expectations and just love it. The wizard is an unlikable humbug, Zeb doesn't do much, Jim the horse has to do the majority of the heavy lifting, but Eureka and the piggies are a delight in this odd comical children's version of what Journey to the Center of the Earth would mean to them. There's a Roald Dahl playfulness that is sometimes lacking in the earlier books that has Baum almost forcing the plot and the characters to interact. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz felt like it just flowed from his pen. Though I do still have Dorothy issues. Dorothy, in another sign of her egocentrism, never thinks of what hell she's putting her family through until she gets bored and it's time to go home. Her Aunt and Uncle where actually MOURNING HER! Full on, black mourning. She almost killed her Uncle with her disappearance on the way to Australia, where they where going for HIS health, and here it is a few months later and she scares them again. There really needs to be a way to not scare the heck out of these good Kansas farm folk. Also, in a total non sequitur, how stupid is Toto? All other animals get to Oz or a fairy land and start chattering away, yet Toto never spoke once in the first book. He must be a total dullard.

Enough odd rantings, I want to state clearly why this book is the best Oz book. Eureka! This kitty cat is all the best qualities of cats, which none cat lovers will probably see as negatives, not understanding the subtlety of cat awesomeness. She's manipulative, vain, only out for herself and never hides the fact that she wants to eat those pork filled piggies. Everyone in Oz always extols their virtues and how wonderful they are, showing them to be pompous asses. Eureka just is. No one really likes her, no one really cares to have her around, but she never justifies, never apologizes, and just is. She won't even defend herself when she is brought to trial on charges of murder (one of the piggies of course). If all the characters would just learn to "be" this series would work so much better. Don't talk about it, don't extol, just be. And if you can, be a cat.(less)

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Aug 09, 2011

Aaron Carpenter added it

The fourth book in the series starts off with Dorothy in California visiting family when an earthquake occurs. A rift opens up in the earth and Dorothy falls through the crack - of course - with a horse, buggy, buggy driver, and her kitten. The adventure begins when the come to a soft landing due to gravity being less inside the earth than it is outside the earth. Soon, the Wizard of Oz follows since his air balloon also got sucked down into the crack.

Dorothy's journey takes her from vegetabl...more

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Nov 23, 2011

Melani rated it

· review of another edition

I don’t like this one as much as I remembered, possibly because I haven’t read it in a while, but this one really suffered on the re-read. There are some things I remember about the book that aren’t actually in the book at all, scenes I remember being quite long are short little one or two paragraphs. (Most notably, when Dorothy and the Wizard rescue the vegetable princess, I remember quite a long scene where they have to sneak out to pick her and then she thanks them and a dangerous moment as ...more

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Jun 09, 2011

Emily rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: juvenile, classics, fiction

Not my favorite Oz book. It's just reads as a series of unrelated episodes as Dorothy and her companions stumble along under the earth trying to find their way to the surface again. There's the land of vegetable people and the land of creatures made out of wood and the land of invisible people, etc. None of the lands yielded any characters with real staying power.

And the inconsistencies make me wonder if Mr. Baum ever re-read his own books. In Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and Ozma arrange...more

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Jul 22, 2011

Mckinley rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: audio, adventure, ya

I sure wouldn't want to run into the Mangaboos. What a story! All sorts of stuff happen to Dorothy here. She sure is a cool, calm, and collected little girl.

"I was sure it would come to this, in the end," remarked the old cab-horse. "Folks don't fall into the middle of the earth and then get back again to tell of their adventures—not in real life. And the whole thing has been unnatural because that cat and I are both able to talk your language, and to understand the word...more

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Jan 15, 2012

George rated it

· review of another edition

Again, I enjoyed this book. The creatures Baum creates are fun, fascinating, and imaginative. The overall premise of each book is pretty much the same - natural disaster sends Dorothy to a fantastical realm and she spends the book on a journey trying to get back home to Kansas, ultimately using some magical device to send her home. So hopefully that formula will change in the next books (I've read short summaries and I think it will).

I think my only gripe with the book was some of t...more

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Aug 24, 2010

Megan rated it

· review of another edition

I have a 6-year-old who adores the Oz books, so we've been working our way through them together. This one was quite fun and had some memorable characters and imminent peril and conflict, which is sometimes lacking in Oz books. My favorite pieces were the valley of invisible people who find interesting ways to avoid getting eaten by invisible bears and the attack of the wooden gargoyles. Although **spoiler**, if Ozma could just whisk Dorothy and her friends out of danger at any moment, why didn'...more

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Jan 01, 2011

Lydia Presley rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, childhood, fiction

The imagination of L. Frank Baum astonishes me. Just when you think he can't possibly come up with something new and unique, he did it again in this fourth book of Oz.

Creative method of traveling back to Oz? Check. Interesting new people and dangers? Check. Lessons learned? Check.

Then there's.. unusual things - such as walking on air, people made of vegetables, fruit that makes one invisible, miniature piglets and a whole slew of new characters to fall in love with (Eur...more

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Dec 14, 2011

Virginia rated it

· review of another edition

This was quite flimsy compared to the previous three books, and especially as a follow-up to the excellent Ozma of Oz.

In a completely unconvincing bit of revisionist history, the Wizard is now shown to have had no part in Ozma's disappearance years ago, although in The Marvelous Land of Oz, it is blatantly pointed out that he conspired with Mombi to prevent Ozma ascending the throne. Since the Wizard is a somewhat love/hate, antihero type of character anyway, there's really no point ...more

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Aug 29, 2011

Book Concierge rated it

· review of another edition

This is the fourth book in Baum’s “Wizard of Oz” series of fantastical children’s adventure books.
We’re not in Kansas anymore! The book starts with Dorothy visiting California with Uncle Henry, when an earthquake opens a passage to another land. Dorothy, her kitten Eureka (Toto is nowhere to be found in this book), and her new friend Zeb fall through the crak along with the horse Jim and the buggy, eventually alighting in the Land of the Mangaboos (a people who grow like vegetables). T...more

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Jan 02, 2012

Slayermel rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, american, childrens, classics, ebook, fantasy, fiction, kindle, male-authors, own, young-adult, series, 2012

Out of all the books in the wizard of Oz series I have read so far I think this one has got to be my least favourite and there for has taken me the longest to get through. I just had such a hard time wanting to pick it up and continue with the story.

Yet again Dorothy meets with natural disaster, this time Earthquake and ends up in a very unusual fairy land where everything seems to be made of glass. She once again makes some new friends and has to overcome some very unusual circums...more

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Nov 08, 2009

Christina rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: children-read-aloud, fantasy

The more I read of Baum's books, the more I realize how truly WEIRD they are, and how utterly original they must have been (and still are) when they appeared at the turn of the century. This fourth episode in the Oz series has Dorothy falling into the center of the earth when an earthquake opens up a huge crack in the ground. There, she again encounters the wizard of Oz (and his nine pet pigs). They meet killer vegetable people, invisible people (and invisible killer bears), wooden gargoyles, an...more

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Feb 05, 2009

Diana rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Didn't like this one as much as the first three - and definitely not as much as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the first) and Ozma of Oz (the 3rd). Although I did like the fact that Dorothy serves as a kind of guide for Zeb to have his own adventure and is her usual matter-of-fact, not easily flustered self, which inspires Zeb to see the whole thing as an adventure of a lifetime, I wasn't thrilled with the series of challenges they all encountered. I'm not sure if it was the presence of the Wizar...moreDidn't like this one as much as the first three - and definitely not as much as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the first) and Ozma of Oz (the 3rd). Although I did like the fact that Dorothy serves as a kind of guide for Zeb to have his own adventure and is her usual matter-of-fact, not easily flustered self, which inspires Zeb to see the whole thing as an adventure of a lifetime, I wasn't thrilled with the series of challenges they all encountered. I'm not sure if it was the presence of the Wizard in this one, who, frankly, sounded a bit patronizing at times, but there were elements that didn't sit well with me.

It took me longer to read this story than the first three combined, which says something right there. I didn't find it as engaging. It wasn't until the end of the book, when Dorothy finds her optimistic outlook again (after having gotten a bit discouraged that they'd never get out of the constant climbing from the center of the earth) and communicates with Ozma that the story picked up some interest for me. I also wasn't thrilled with the personality that Baum gave Eureka the kitten - although I do have to say that her reasoning for not defending herself against accusations of killing and eating Ozma's pet piglet had me chuckling. Eureka had a stubborn streak and was miffed that they automatically assumed the worst of her.

The different challenges and variety of "beings" they encountered after their tumble into the center of the earth after being caught in an earthquake in California weren't quite as interesting as the adventures in the first three books. I did like Jim the cab horse, but I wasn't thrilled with the way the Wizard and Zeb (and Dorothy, too, at times) often treated him - although he was their salvation many times, they didn't seem to have a lot of respect for him and simply expected him to pull their belongings and the buggy, without ever thinking that he deserved better treatment. All in all, not as satisfactory a story as the previous three.(less)

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Mar 24, 2011

Danns rated it

Fantastic book! This time around Dorthy and the Wizard return to Oz with some new friends: Zeb the coach boy, Jim his cab horse, and Eureka, Dorthy's kitten. An earthquake swallows them up as Dorthy makes her way back to Kansas from her trip to Australia and what ensues is a romp through the Oz underworld. Fatastical creatures, new lands, and adventures galore in this book!

My daughter and I really enjoyed this one and looked forward to each chapter. Once again, we were eventuall...more

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Jan 25, 2011

Cortney rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: read-alouds

I started reading this series with my son when he turned 4. We'd just started reading chapter books and I was looking for great stories without the presence of annoying pop culture. The Oz books were recommended by a trusted friend and I was skeptical at first, especially at his age, but the first book is so much better than the movie, and each subsequent book has been better than the last. After checking a couple different versions out from the library we now make sure to always get the books w...more

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Aug 02, 2011

Jerzy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011, children

Though I'd give 5 stars to the experience of laying in bed and reading this aloud to Franny (as I would every book we read together), this was weird in a way that occasionally made me wince. I liked some of Baum's supremely strange creations - the Braided Man of Pyramid Mountain (despite that he appeared in one of Fran's first nightmares while we were reading it), the land of invisible people (and invisible bears) - but the vegetable Mangaboos and flying wooden bookshelf creatures seemed straine...more

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Oct 06, 2011

Sharon rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: e-books

A cute book featuring many beloved characters from previous tales, like Dorothy, the Wizard, the Woggle-bug and more. In this outing, Baum also introduces Jim the cab-horse, Zeb Hugson, the people of Voe, the Gargoyles, Eureka the kitten, and several others.

It's apparent that the story takes place around April 1906, as it features Dorothy and Eureka trying to get on the train in San Francisco ... and subsequently falling through the ground during an earthquake (along with Jim and Ze...more

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Jul 26, 2011

Atman88 rated it

· review of another edition

Not the best book in the series, but a solid arc and nice finish. I guess the land of Oz just isn't big enough for too many stories and adventures. 4 lands and the Emerald City just aren't enough. But 'Fairyland' is as large as you can imagine, so L. Frank Baum writes about the lands adjoining, under, and around so that we can really enjoy the moments our 'dear friends' arrive back in the land we love - the land of the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow, Billina the Hen, TikTok, Ozma, and...more

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Jan 24, 2010

Jason Pettus rated it

· review of another edition

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally. This review covers all 14 of the Baum Oz books, which is why it's found on all 14 book pages here.)

I think it's fairly safe by now to assume that nearly everyone in Western society is familiar with The Wizard of Oz, most of us because of the classic 1939 movie adaptation; and many realize...more(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally. This review covers all 14 of the Baum Oz books, which is why it's found on all 14 book pages here.)

I think it's fairly safe by now to assume that nearly everyone in Western society is familiar with The Wizard of Oz, most of us because of the classic 1939 movie adaptation; and many realize as well that author L. Frank Baum ended up penning a whole series of sequels, because of the original book's astounding success back at the turn of the 20th century when it was first published -- 13 sequels altogether, before his death in 1919, which after the movie's success twenty years later became a literal merchandising empire, spawning hundreds more official sequels by various authors and hundreds more unofficial ones once the characters moved into the public domain. And like many others, I've always been interested in what these 14 "canonical" Oz books have to say; and that's why I decided this winter to sit down and read them all in a row for the first time, easy to do because of them being available for free at both Project Gutenberg and the email subscription service DailyLit (which is how I myself read them, and in fact is how I read many of the older books you see reviewed here; I'm a big fan of theirs, and highly recommend them).

But of course, to even approach these books with the right mindset, it's important to understand that like so many other one-hit-wonders, Baum was not only eluded by success in most of his other endeavors but was an active failure at them -- in the 1870s, for example, he unsuccessfully tried his hand at breeding fancy poultry (a national fad at the time), then in the 1880s opened his own theatre and became one of the first-ever Americans to produce modern-style stage musicals, apparently a little too ahead of its time, then in the 1890s moved to the Dakota Territory and opened a dry-goods store that eventually failed, as well as starting a newspaper that folded too. So it was sort of a case of random lightning in a bottle when he decided in the late 1890s to try his hand at children's literature, and ended up with his very first title being the most popular kid's book in America for two years straight, and no surprise that Baum then spent the rest of his life desperately trying to figure out how to bottle that lightning again. Because now that I've read it myself, I can confirm that the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz is astonishingly great, a sort of miraculous combination of traits that makes for an almost perfect children's story; and although most of it follows the same storyline seen in the '39 movie, there are also significant differences, making it worth your while to sit and read the book version if you have the interest. (And by the way, for some really interesting reading, check out the academic analysis that was done of this book in the 1960s, arguing that most of its details symbolically correspond almost exactly to various political and economic issues of the late 1800s, including the yellow brick road representing the much-discussed gold standard of that age, the scarecrow representing the then-hot Populist Party, Toto representing the teetotaler [prohibitionist:] movement, and a lot more.)

But of course, there are a couple of details about this book that have been forgotten over the decades too, which also help explain its record-shattering success -- it was an unusually lavish book for its time, for example, with two-toned illustrations on every page and several full-color plates, and let's also not forget that Baum himself mounted a Broadway-style musical of Oz just two years after the book was published, a huge hit which toured nationally for a decade and that was even more insanely popular than the book itself (including making national stars out of vaudeville performers Fred Stone and David Montgomery, playing the Scarecrow and Tin Man; the stage production left out the Cowardly Lion altogether, which is why he is also barely seen in any of the 13 canonical sequels). And so that's why when Baum attempted starting up other fantasy series in the wake of Oz's success, hoping to turn all of them into lucrative franchises like the original, the audience mostly responded with yawns; and that's why Baum eventually went back to writing more and more Oz books as the 20th century continued, because by now the strength of the brand far outweighed the relative writing skills of Baum when it came to any particular volume.

That's why, at least to adults, it's perhaps actually the introductions to each book that are the most fascinating thing about them; because to be frank, most of the books follow a pretty familiar formula, with a danger-filled quest involving various kooky characters that is usually finished about two-thirds of the way through, followed by a massive parade or party that lets Baum trot out the growing number of main characters added to this universe with each title. (And by the way, prepare yourself for Baum's unending love of the deus-ex-machina plot device; over half the books end along the lines of, "And then our heroes took possession of a super-duper magical device, which they waved in the air and all their troubles went away.") In fact, for those who don't know, that's why the official map of Oz and its surrounding lands eventually grew so large, because Baum still hadn't given up on his dream of having a whole series of kid-lit cash cows out there generating revenue for him, and so would use many of these Oz sequels to introduce entirely new casts of characters who live in entirely new lands, "just over the mountains" or "just past the desert" of Oz itself. By the end of the original 14 books, in fact, Baum had built up a virtual aristocracy of licensable characters, all of whom would have to be dragged out for a cameo at some point in each book to remind the audience of their existence -- not just the cast of the original book and '39 movie but also various other princesses like Ozma and Betsy Bobbin, boy characters like Ojo the Unlucky and Button Bright, adults who help them like the Shaggy Man, Cap'n Bill and Ugu the Shoemaker, and of course a whole litany of quirky fantastical sidekicks, including but not limited to Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Great Jinjin, Billina the Angry Hen, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, and Polychrome the Rainbow Fairy. Whew! And so did the Great Oz Merchandising Experiment keep limping along for two decades, with each sequel selling less and less and getting lazier and lazier (for example, the tenth book in the series, 1916's Rinkitink in Oz, was actually a non-Oz book written a decade previous, published almost unchanged except for a hasty final chapter full of Oz regulars slapped onto the end); and thus did Baum's bad luck in business come back with a vengeance as well, with three more Broadway productions that were all flops, and even the establishment of a film production company in 1914 that eventually went bankrupt.

You can see the progression of all this reflected in Baum's first-person introductions to each book, which like I said is why they might be the most fascinating parts of all for adult readers -- how in the first sequel, for example, he expresses legitimately gleeful surprise and joy at how passionate his fans were, and how thousands of children had literally written to him out of the blue demanding more Oz stories, while with each subsequent sequel his tone becomes more and more snarky, ala "Well, dear and wonderful children, you've yet again demanded another Oz book like the sheep you are, so here it is, you screeching little monsters." In fact, in book six of the series, 1910's The Emerald City of Oz, Baum flat-out states that it's going to be the very last Oz book, and it's no coincidence that many fans actually consider this one to be the best of the original fourteen, because of Baum's extra attention to and enthusiasm for this particular storyline, thinking as he erroneously did that it would be the grand finale of the entire Oz universe; but after his later financial failures forced him back into the Oz business again, the gloves finally come off in his introductions, with most of the rest sounding to today's ears something like, "Well, okay, here again is the sugary teat you all apparently can't get enough of suckling, you infuriating little animals, so open wide and take your medicine." Now, of course, you shouldn't feel too bad for Baum; by the last years of his life, his combined books and plays were generating for him in today's terms roughly a quarter-million dollars a year just in personal royalties.

So all in all, an experience I'm glad I had, reading all fourteen original Oz books in a row, but not something I'd recommend to others; instead, maybe better just to read the first, then skip to the sixth, then skip straight to the 14th, 1920's Glinda of Oz, because of its unusual darkness (probably caused, many scholars agree, by Baum knowing that he was near death). As with many authors I've looked at here at CCLaP, history seems to have correctly adjusted itself in Baum's case, with most of his books now rightfully falling into the obscurity they deserve, even while his one true masterpiece is still rightfully recognized as such. (less)

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Oct 04, 2009

vicki_girl rated it

Shelves: series-complete, format-deadtree, own, fiction, juvenile, series_reading, fiction_speculative, fiction_speculative_fantasy

As I continue to work my way through the Oz books with my kids, this one was probably my least favorite so far. I still enjoyed it, but not as much as the previous three.

Dorothy was as adorable and charming as always, and I loved her pet kitten Eureka. However, the other characters just weren't as engaging as previous books. Zeb was pratically non-existant. Although, Jim the cab-horse was rather funny.

The story wasn't as exciting either. While it continues to follow ...more

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Feb 23, 2011

aaron rated it

· review of another edition

this is the fourth book written for the oz chronicles by l. frank baum and it is another fun read. this one isn't quite as good as the previous few, but it is still very good. this one finds dorothy once again traveling to the fairy countries. this time she finds herself in a land of vegetable people along with her kitten, a cart-horse, a boy named jeb, and the wizard of oz. they have to find their way across a few countries until ozma once again rescues her with her magic belt. a good read...more

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Jun 28, 2009

Lori Anderson rated it

My son and I are reading all of the Oz books, and Zack particularly loved this one. The nine little piglets and the fall through the center of the earth was quite creative! And watch out for the Vegetable People and the Gargoyles!

Lori Anderson

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Jul 05, 2011

Will Waller rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, series, fantasy

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is the fourth book in the series and a bit of a disappointment after the third book. As I understand it, this is the second book in the trio of books that Baum was contracted to write after the success of the first two books. This book fails because the humor is absent, with the exception of the character Tik-Tok. Humor was helpful for older readers like myself of the Oz books rather than just reading for reading’s sake. Also, I thought this book was a bit of a ...more

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Dec 20, 2011

Aaron Rubman rated it

· review of another edition

Every so often I foget that Frank Baum, while terribly creative, did not have much of a sense of narrative. This is basically a "there and back again" story that doesn't worry overmuch about the "back." Instead it's just one obstacle after another on the way to an undefined "there," until the party hits a dead end and Dorothy uses a McGuffin that was in her possession all along.

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About L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator W. W. Denslow, of one of the most popular books in American children's literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known today as simply The Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a plethora of other works (55 novels in total, 82 short stor...more

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Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Oz #4)

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