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About All of the Oz Books


lighted to have them about him. He knew what they wanted and he was happiest when he was making his great audience of little folks happy. It is this close and loving contact with childhood that has put the Oz books in very front rank of all the juvenile books. John R. Neill’s whimsical and astonishing pictures step hand-in-hand with Mr. Baum’s stones. As illustrations for children they have no equals.

“I thought everybody believed in Oz," said the Scarecrow to Happy Toko, when the foolish little Princes of the Silver Island said, “It is not on the map.” Of course, the Silver Island isn’t on the map, either, but all over America—and all over the world, in fact—the children do believe in Oz. Nearly twenty years ago little girls, who are mothers today, were

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