The Road to Oz

The Road to Oz was published in 1909 and is the fifth book in the Oz sequence. Dorothy is back in Kansas, briefly, when she meets the Shaggy Man at the crossroads near her uncle’s farm. They start walking down what looks like an ordinary country road and find themselves quickly out of Kansas and on the way to Oz. Along the way they pick up Button-Bright, a perpetually lost small boy, and Polychrome, the Rainbow’s daughter, who has slipped off her father’s bow and cannot get home.

The book is more episodic than the earlier ones, mostly a series of countries the party walks through on the way to the Emerald City for Princess Ozma’s birthday party. There is the city of Foxville, ruled by King Dox, where everyone has a fox’s head. There is Dunkiton, where everyone is part donkey. The eventual arrival in the Emerald City for the birthday celebration brings in a remarkable number of crossover characters from Baum’s other fantasy books, including Santa Claus from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which is one of the strangest cameo choices in early children’s fiction.