The Scarecrow of Oz

The Scarecrow of Oz was published in 1915, and Baum himself reportedly considered it his favorite of the Oz novels. The book begins outside of Oz entirely. A girl named Trot and her old sailor friend Cap’n Bill, both originally from Baum’s non-Oz Sea Fairies books, are swept into a whirlpool off the California coast and end up in a series of strange undersea and underground adventures.

They eventually reach the kingdom of Jinxland, a small country located inside Oz but cut off from it by a mountain range. Jinxland is ruled by the cruel King Krewl and the witch Blinkie. The Scarecrow himself appears about two-thirds of the way through the book to help rescue Princess Gloria, who has been frozen-hearted by Blinkie’s magic, and to overthrow Krewl. The political plot is more focused than in most Oz books, and the romance between Gloria and her gardener Pon is unusually substantial. A late-period highlight in the Baum sequence.