A Gnome's Ponderings

Kenneth Graheme's Wind in the Willows has been a part of my literary world for just about as long as I can remember. It's a profound...

Edwin A. Abbit's Flatland is a classic of quirky literature. A short Victorian novel that describes a world of literally two-dimensions,...

With New Treasure Seekers, or the Bastable Children In Search of a Fortune, my time with the Bastable kids has come to an end, along with th...

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is just what it says on the tin, an origin story for Santa Claus. After the Wizard of Oz, it might be...

I'm a big fan of A. E. Nesbit's Psammead trilogy. It's one of the cornerstones of modern children's fantasy, even if I have ...

The Master Key is the closest thing the L. Frank Baum ever came to writing science fiction. While the devices in the book are as magical as ...

A collection of unrelated stories, American Fairy Tales is a bit of an oddball book in L. Frank Baum's fantasies. First off, the fac...

Dot and Tot of Merryland is easily my least favorite fantasy novel by L. Frank Baum. Let me get that out of the way at the start. I don'...

The Magical Monarch of Mo, originally published as A New Wonderland, was L. Frank Baum's first fantasy book, published right before the ...

Ho boy. This is a big one. The Emerald City of Oz is the book that turns so much of Oz on its head. The Nome King returns, more vindictive ...

Okay, moving on to the fifth Oz book. While it is far from the worst book in the Oz canon, the Road to Oz might have the most banal plot...

Ozma of Oz is the third book in the Oz cannon. It also happens to my favorite book in the series. I've easily read it more often than I...