L, Frank Baum (1856-1919)

Lyman Frank Baum is the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and its many equally wonderful sequels. Over the last several months, I have been reading these sequels in publication order, roughly one per month. At this point, I have read nine of the fourteen volumes, having just finished The Scarecrow of Oz (1915).

I don’t generally like books written for children, but I make an exception for the Oz books. They are brilliantly inventive, full of colorful characters, and in general great fun to read.

The Oz Books

I feel that Baum has not received sufficient credit as the master of American literature that he is. The Danes love Hans Christian Andersen; the Swedes adore Pippi Longstocking; the British admire Lewis Carroll’s Alice books; and so on.

After reading the first three or four books, I began to notice a slight diminution in quality. Baum kept creating more characters, and then attempted to bring them all together in an increasingly extended denouement. This was most evident in Ozma of Oz (1907), when not only Billina the Hen was a character, but also each of her multitudinous chicks. Eventually, Baum saw his mistake and limited his denouements to more manageable lengths. In The Scarecrow of Oz, the love fest at the end was limited to a couple of chapters.

So I suggest that if things aren’t going your way, pick up a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and start reading it. You will feel better for it; and you will be introduced into one of the most fascinating fantasy worlds in all of literature.