I finally finished the whole collection of Oz stories. I was surprised at how many there are. Each story is cute and whimsical, but after reading several of them it seemed a little repetitive. But the creativity and imagination required to come up with the various characters presented in each book is amazing!

I was so excited to get this for Christmas! I've been looking for a complete set for years and now I finally have one. Ah... childhood memories. And YES, I'm vindicated. The "ruby slippers" are in fact SILVER!

Frank Baum clearly loves creating strange characters and worlds, but the plots of these stories are somewhat hit-and-miss. Glad to have read this collection though, if only for the introduction to my favourite character, Polychrome.

This was quite the endeavor. But I managed to read 14 stories written in classic 1900s style in 7 months which I'm going to consider a feat. I probably could have finished it if 5-6 but since I was trying to read through them back to back I had to take weeks off to give my brain a break from the old language and the children's themes.

I think the stories themselves are lovely, and I especially loved reading the Author's Notes where Frank L. Baum actually took ideas from his readers who wrote him letters. It's not only a way to show how times were different then but it also just kind of makes your heart happy to think of some little boy or girl wanting a certain character written into a story, and low and behold they're written in.

I think for the time, and for the audience, these are great stories. They're interesting and adventurous and realistic (considering the use of magic throughout). I'm not typically one to read "adventure" or "fantasy" genres but I still enjoyed these stories. I will admit reading through character descriptions did get tedious, but again, I was reading these stories back to back whereas when they were being produced they were only being published once every few years! (Crazy to think about that as well!)

Only did the first book, the original Wizard of Oz. Although dated, it's still a good story and we quickly picked up on details throughout as we read.

Have read so far:
The Wizard of Oz
The Marvelous Land of Oz

Well I've finally finished my trek through all of 14 of the Oz novels written by L. Frank Baum. If you've seen The Wizard of Oz movie, you have an idea of how most of the stories go, but I think they would still be enjoyed by younger audiences. Binge-reading them (in my opinion) really highlights the similarities in the stories, so as an adult, it's probably best to dip into the collection now and again. I think my favorite stories were The Tin Woodman of Oz and The Magic of Oz, as the initial premises of the stories got better in the last third of the books. Though in going through the summaries to refresh my memory, I have good things to say about many, if not all of them.

In the Kindle edition I have, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is illustrated but the rest of the books are not, nor do the covers seem included. There are some typographical errors, particularly nearer the end of the ebook. Still, for only $.99 there is much pleasure to be had in this collection - an outstanding deal.