The Oz Enthusiast

The Sam Steele series only lasted for two books. This was to be L. Frank Baum's series for teen boys, just as the Aunt Jane's were...

One of the stranger changes - at least to me - made by Reilly & Britton to a book cover, happened to Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work , w...

Rinkitink in Oz was the last of the L. Frank Baum books that I read as a kid. Maybe this is why it never felt as much a part of the series ...

The Aunt Jane's Nieces series was written by L. Frank Baum under the pseudonym of Edith Van Dyne - the same name he used for the Flyin...

Here are a couple more Nip & Tuck similarities to Oz. The first image shows Nip & Tuck visiting the wife of Peter Pumpkin Eater in h...

Here's Queen Ann of Oogaboo, another drawing by John R. Neill from Tik-Tok of Oz . Queen Ann sets out to conquer the world, but she does...

L. Frank Baum wrote many books under pseudonyms. Under the name Laura Bancroft, he wrote the Twinkle Tales , a set of six small books with s...

For The Scarecrow of Oz , Michael Herring broke away from his earlier practice of repeating a John R. Neill illustration as a full fledged p...

Here's the Nome King at a pivotal point in his career as Oz villain - he's about to be banished from his kingdom by some enchanted e...

The Scarecrow of Oz, from 1915, settled the format of the Oz books for the next 20 years or so - color plate cover, matching dustjacket, 12 ...

This past weekend I attended the first local large antique show of the season - as I've mentioned in the past, I've found these to b...

This drawing from Tik-Tok of Oz was used as the heading for Chapter 12, page 129. Here, John R. Neill has pictured the handmaidens of Erma,...

Here are a couple covers by W. W. Denslow with an Egyptian theme. The first is Enoch the Philistine, which gives us a rather religious expla...

This drawing from Tik-Tok of Oz shows Erma, the Queen of Light introducing herself to Betsy Bobbin. It's a nice example of John R. Neil...

Some of my favorite W. W. Denslow covers for Rand McNally have a definite bizarre quality. The best example that I have for this, in my opin...

In 1981, the Minneapolis Children's Theater Company produced an elaborate musical adaptation of The Marvelous Land of Oz . I was in coll...

I was asked if I would post a photo of the complete Sky Island dustjacket, so here it is. I didn't include the front and rear flaps, whi...

Here we have Betsy Bobbin and her friend Hank the Mule struggling through the ocean after falling off a ship during a storm at sea. If this ...

Eleanor Boardman was a silent film star of the 1920's, who was married to director King Vidor - who worked on the MGM Wizard of Oz. (The...

The early 1900's saw a huge fascination with the newly possible airplane. L. Frank Baum wasn't one to let a new scientific discovery...