Before You Begin

Before you begin.

It begins with a great gray prairie and a small gray house, where a little girl named Dorothy lives with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em — until a cyclone lifts that house clear off the ground and sets it down in a country brighter and stranger than anything Kansas ever knew. From the moment Dorothy steps out into the Land of the Munchkins, she is on a road of yellow brick that leads, mile after mile, toward a city built all of green.

L. Frank Baum wrote this book in Chicago in 1900 as a deliberately new kind of fairy tale — one in which, as he put it, “the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.” He kept the magic of the old tales but swept away the dread, and in doing so created the first great American fairy story and one of the most beloved children’s books ever written.

What endures is the company Dorothy keeps. A Scarecrow who longs for brains, a Tin Woodman who aches for a heart, and a great Lion ashamed of his own cowardice each join her on the road, certain they lack the very thing the journey proves they already possess. Around them spreads a whole world: the Emerald City and its mysterious Wizard, the Wicked Witch of the West with her one far-seeing eye, and the good witches Glinda and the Witch of the North.

This illustrated edition opens with a gallery of the cast, the maps, and the great scenes of Oz; and as you read, the story unfolds in six visual movements — recap plates you unlock along the way, each gathering together the journey so far, with never a glimpse of what lies ahead. Turn the page, and set out with Dorothy down the yellow brick road.