What were your memories and expectations, Sarah? Oddly enough, I still remember key points, like Button Bright’s facial reconstruction and the fate of the Love Magnet, but I was only vaguely aware, before reading it again, that the novel itself was a little slow. Everything about the memory is odd – furniture in the wrong places, and so on – so I wonder if this was around the time my sister was born, when I was five. My only real memory of this book is a very clear image of being read it by my Mum. I actually came to this book with very minimal expectations, says Nick. We’d like to thank you for coming along with us! Now, it’s time to celebrate: surprisingly, and by total coincidence, with a book that ends in a party – the blog comes full circle with a visit from the magical and immortal Santa Claus. After a few slow starts, we’re feeling confident in our format and excited for the books to come. A year has passed since our very first blog, and we’re really in the groove of it now. Here at BURZEE, though, we are anything but worn down. that ought to win love.” It’s hard not to read those as the vague, upbeat sentiments of a man who feels worn down. In it, he said, he tried to “respect the wishes” of his young readers and provide them with “some new characters. but it is a such a long and exciting story that it must be saved for another book – and perhaps that book will be the last story that is ever told about the Land of Oz.” In the meantime, Baum offered up another story that was both lighter and frothier than its predecessor, built almost solely around the journey through fairyland that formed the core of many of his earlier tales.

He had hinted as much in the author’s note to his last book, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and the note that opened his new offering, The Road to Oz, made it explicit: “I have received some very remarkable News from the Land of Oz, which has greatly astonished me.

The road to oz 1909