Ozma of Oz

L. Frank Baum

Aug 2012 · Courier Corporation

About this ebook

A raging sea storm carries Dorothy Gale (charming heroine of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) to the fairy land of Ev, where an exciting new adventure awaits her and all young readers who venture into this enchanting realm of fantasy.
Dorothy meets some new friends — Billina, a friendly talking hen; Tiktok, a remarkable Copper Man; the lovely Princess Ozma of Oz; and some strange characters too — Wheelers, with wheels for hands and feet; and Princess Langwidere who wears a different head each day.
When Dorothy learns that the Queen of Ev and her ten children are prisoners of the wicked Nome King, she sets out on a magic carpet with her new friends and some old favorites — Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Tin Woodman — to rescue them.
The danger mounts as Princess Ozma herself falls victim to the Nome King's magic and is transformed into an emerald grasshopper. Youngsters will be swept up in the action as Dorothy and her entourage match wits with the Nome King and his devilish Nomes in a forbidding underground fortress.
Ozma of Oz will delight children of all ages from the very first chapter in which Dorothy battles the sea, to its surprising conclusion, when she struggles to free the royal family and her friends.
The original text is reprinted here in its entirety from the first 1907 edition, with John R. Neill's amusing and imaginative illustrations that capture the flavor of this wonderful, witty tale.

Ratings and reviews

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About the author

Best known as the author of the Wizard of Oz series, Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, in New York. When Baum was a young man, his father, who had made a fortune in oil, gave him several theaters in New York and Pennsylvania to manage. Eventually, Baum had his first taste of success as a writer when he staged The Maid of Arran, a melodrama he had written and scored. Married in 1882 to Maud Gage, whose mother was an influential suffragette, the two had four sons. Baum often entertained his children with nursery rhymes and in 1897 published a compilation titled Mother Goose in Prose, which was illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. The project was followed by three other picture books of rhymes, illustrated by William Wallace Denslow. The success of the nursery rhymes persuaded Baum to craft a novel out of one of the stories, which he titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Some critics have suggested that Baum modeled the character of the Wizard on himself. Other books for children followed the original Oz book, and Baum continued to produce the popular Oz books until his death in 1919. The series was so popular that after Baum's death and by special arrangement, Oz books continued to be written for the series by other authors. Glinda of Oz, the last Oz book that Baum wrote, was published in 1920.