The Patchwork Girl of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz came out in 1913, three years after Baum had publicly promised to end the series. The book is one of the most beloved in the canon, partly because of its title character. Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, is a multicolored sewn doll brought to life by a Magic Powder. She talks in cheerful nonsense rhymes, is enormously enthusiastic, and complicates almost every situation she enters.

The main plot follows a Munchkin boy named Ojo, who is trying to gather the strange ingredients for a spell to revive his Uncle Nunkie, who has been accidentally turned to stone by the magician Dr. Pipt. Ojo’s quest sends him across Oz with Scraps, the Glass Cat, and the Woozy, a square-shaped beast. Along the way they confront the prohibition against magic that Ozma has placed on private citizens of Oz, which creates the book’s central moral problem. A more substantive plot than some of the earlier Oz books, with Scraps consistently stealing every scene she appears in.