About the book
After a powerful cyclone carries her house from the gray Kansas prairies to a vibrant, magical land, a young girl named Dorothy finds herself in the middle of a strange new world. This classic fantasy tale follows her journey as she seeks a way to return home, encountering peculiar locals and mysterious figures while navigating a realm where magic is very real.
The opening
Introduction
Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages,
for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal.
The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.
Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library;
for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie,
dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible
and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale.
Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.
Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today.
It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained
and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.
L. Frank Baum Chicago, April, 1900.
Chapter I The Cyclone
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry,
who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.
Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.
There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room;
and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds.
Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner.