The Wonderful World of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Penguin, £8.99 in UK)

The film starring the young Judy Garland was made sixty years ago, no less, but the Oz books are a good deal older than that

The film starring the young Judy Garland was made sixty years ago, no less, but the Oz books are a good deal older than that. Baum, their creator, was born in 1856 and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was first published in 1900; its successors, thirteen in all, came over the next twenty years, by which time Baum had moved to Hollywood and the growing film industry. This volume includes the original Wizard chronicle and two sequels, The Emerald City of Oz and Glinda of Oz. In America, if not in Europe, they rank as children's classics and the present volume has been edited with notes by Professor Jack Zipes.