The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
Contents
--Introduction-- 
1. The Cyclone 
2. The Council with the Munchkins 
3. How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow 
4. The Road Through the Forest 
5. The Rescue of the Tin Woodman 
6. The Cowardly Lion 
7. The Journey to the Great Oz 
8. The Deadly Poppy Field 
9. The Queen of the Field Mice 
10. The Guardian of the Gates 
11. The WonderfulEmerald City of Oz
12. The Search for the Wicked Witch 
13. The Rescue
14. The Winged Monkeys 
15. The Discovery of Oz the Terrible
16. The Magic Art of the Great Humbug 
17. How the Balloon Was Launched 
18. Away to the South 
19. Attacked by the Fighting Trees 
20. The Dainty China Country 
21. The Lion Becomes the King of Beasts 
22. The Country of the Quadlings 
23. Glinda TheGood Witch Grants Dorothy's Wish 
24. Home Again 
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 morehappiness 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 areeliminated, 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 BaumChicago, April, 1900.

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ
1. 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 wagonmany 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. There was
nogarret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the
ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case
one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any
building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle
of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could
see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree
nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to
the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the
plowed land into a gray mass, with little...