The Road to Oz
1909
The magic of Oz endures in this sequel, where Dorothy Gale finds herself whisked away once more, not to Kansas, but to a strange intersection of roads where nothing leads quite where expected. She joins forces with the Shaggy Man, whose good heart conceals a mysterious past; Button-Bright, a boy who cannot remember where he belongs; and Polychrome, the Daughter of the Rainbow, as flighty and beautiful as sunlight through mist. Together they stumble toward the Emerald City, encountering along the way a Musical Saw that plays without a player, fearsome Scoodlers who demand tolls, a kettle of endless soup, and a pond that speaks only truth. Baum's storytelling glows with early twentieth-century warmth, his Oz still a place where kindness conquers cruelty and the lost find their way home. The road to Oz is, as ever, less about destination than the strange companions you meet along the way.
Editions
X-Ray
“You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said.The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends,' was the answer””
— L. Frank Baum
“In other words, the more stupid one is, the more he thinks he knows.””
— L. Frank Baum
“It isn't what we are, but what folks think we are, that counts in this world.””
— L. Frank Baum
“...The more stupid one is the more he thinks he knows.””
— L. Frank Baum
“The queerness doesn't matter so long as they're friends.””
— L. Frank Baum
“I've learned from long experience that every road leads somewhere, or there wouldn't be any road; so it's likely that if we travel long enough, my dear, we will come to some place or another in the end. What place it will be we can't even guess at this moment, but we're sure to find out when we get there.””
— L. Frank Baum
“Perhaps it is better to be a machine that does its duty than a flesh-and-blood person who will not, for a dead truth is better than a live falsehood.””
— L. Frank Baum
“He examined the contents of the closets and selected an elegant suit of clothing. Strangely enough, everything about it was shaggy, although so new and beautiful, and he sighed with contentment to realize that he could now be finely dressed and still be the shaggy man.””
— L. Frank Baum
“Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use.””
— L. Frank Baum
