Ozma of Oz

Ozma of Oz was published in 1907 and is one of the strongest books in the entire Baum sequence. Dorothy returns. She is en route to Australia with her Uncle Henry when a storm washes her overboard with a yellow hen named Bellina. They drift to the magical country of Ev, on the same continent as Oz, where Dorothy meets Tik-Tok, the wind-up mechanical man, and discovers that the royal family of Ev has been enslaved by the wicked Nome King, who has transformed them into ornaments in his underground kingdom.

Princess Ozma of Oz, now the established ruler from the previous book, arrives in Ev with an army to rescue the royal family. The book contains some of Baum’s most inventive set-pieces: the cliff lunch-box trees and dinner-pail trees, the army of twenty-six officers, the famous guessing game in which Ozma’s party must identify the transformed prisoners among the Nome King’s ornaments. Bellina the hen turns out to be unexpectedly resourceful. Tik-Tok is one of the great early science-fiction characters. A great book to read directly after the original.