Top 100 Children’s Novels #83: Ozma of Oz by Frank L. Baum

#83 Ozma of Oz by Frank L. Baum (1907)
24 points

I loved all of these books when I was a child, but this one was my favorite. It had a talking chicken, a princess who could change out her head when she got bored of her look, and a young girl who commanded her army. Everything a young book loving nerdy girl could want. – Amy Miele

Beware the Wheelers! This book contains the most resourceful talking chicken in literature. Yay, Billina! – Anne Nesbet

This is my favorite of the Oz books. Dorothy’s sturdy acceptance of her wild adventures, the strange creatures, and above all those marvelous dinner pail and lunch box trees never fail to capture the imagination. – Jennifer Wharton

Now I had to break out the handy dandy Who’s Who In Oz by Jack Snow (circa 1988) for the plot summary.  Here it is: “Few of the Oz books are as crowded with exciting Oz happenings as this one.  Not only does it bring Dorothy back to Oz on her second visit, but it introduces Dorothy to Ozma, relates Ozma’s first important adventure, and introduces for the first time such famous Oz characters as Tik-Tok, the mechanical man, Billina the hen, the Hungry Tiger, and-The Nome King! Most of the adventures in this book take place outside Oz, in the Land of Ev and the Nome Kingdom.  Scarcely a page fails to quiver with excitement, magic and adventure.”

Baum was sort of the victim of his own success.  In Through the Looking Glass by Selma Lanes we read that after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, “The idea of a continuing series of Oz books  . . . came not from author or illustrator, but from Baum’s young readers.  Smitten by Oz-mania, they sent impassioned pleas to the author for more stories about Oz.  By 1904, Baum gave in and produced The Marvelous Land of Oz: A Sequel to The Wizard of Oz.  This only swelled the clamor from fans, and in 1907 Baum published Ozma of Oz…”  After a while Baum tried to pull an Arthur Conan Doyle.  He didn’t kill off Dorothy or anything but he did claim that a magical Barrier of Invisibility had gone up preventing all communication from Oz.  Barriers can always be broken down and authors can usually be persuaded to make more money.  He relented after a while, and soon he was writing more of the books until pretty much his death.

I like to have an expert to turn to for every topic on this list and in terms of all things Oz there is no better place to go than Oz and Ends.  A quick search of J.L. Bell’s site on Ozma of Oz revealed this list.  As you can see, it covers everything from visual representations of The Nome King to its influence on books like Matt Phelan’s The Storm in the Barn.

There are lots of covers to choose from:

There have also been various comic book versions of the book.

And on the slightly more adult side, there was a series that had issues that looked like this . . .

And my personal favorite . . .

Little surprise that the film Return to Oz took most of its details from Ozma of Oz.  Wheelers and all . . .

Lord I loved that creepy film.  I mean, how much worse is it to think that Dorothy’s insane rather than that she had a crazy head-injury induced dream?

Filed under: Best Books, Top 100 Children's Novels (2012)