The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow.
The story chronicles the adventures of a girl named Dorothy in the Land of Oz. Thanks in part to the 1939 MGM movie, it is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its initial success, and the success of the popular 1902 Broadway musical Baum adapted from his story, led to Baum's writing thirteen more Oz books.
Dorothy is an orphan raised by her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm. She has a little black dog Toto, who is her sole source of happiness. One day the farmhouse, with Dorothy and Toto inside, is caught up in a tornado and deposited in a field in Munchkin Country in the Land of Oz. The falling house kills the ruler of the Munchkins, the Wicked Witch of the East.
