Exploding Oz

INTRODUCTION.

Folk lore, 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 bloodcurdling incident 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 wondertales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.

L. Frank Baum. Chicago, April,, 1900.

LIST OF CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER I.—The Cyclone.

CHAPTER II.—The Council with The Munchkins.

CHAPTER III.—How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow.

CHAPTER IV.—The Road Through the Forest.

CHAPTER V.—The Rescue of the Tin Woodman.
CHAPTER VI.—The Cowardly Lion.

CHAPTER VII.—The Journey to The Great Oz.

CHAPTER VIII.—The Deadly Poppy Field.
CHAPTER IX.—The Queen of the Field Mice.
CHAPTER X.—The Guardian of the Gates.
CHAPTER XI.—The Wonderful"Emerald City

of Oz.

CHAPTER XII.—The Search for the Wicked
Witch.

CHAPTER XIII How the Four were Reunited.

CHAPTER XIV.—The Winged Monkeys.
CHAPTER XV.—The Discovery of Oz

the Terrible.
CHAPTER XVI.—The Magic Art of the

Great Humbug.
CHAPTER XVII. — How the Balloon was

Launched.

CHAPTER XVIII.—Away to the South.
CHAPTER XIX.—Attacked by the Fighting Trees.
CHAPTER XX.—The Dainty China Country.

CHAPTER XXI.—The Lion Becomes the King

of Beasts.
CHAPTER XXII.—The Country of the Quadlings.

CHAPTER XXIII.—The Good Witch grants Dorothy's Wish.
CHAPTER XXIV—Home Again.

fhis book is dedicated to my , good /fiend ®"

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