Emerald City Wonderful Wizard of Oz

by Charlie Smalls

Wait—I know you just finished an Oz book, but hear me out: the original 1900 text reads quite differently from later adaptations. If you enjoyed the Emerald City edition, the source material offers Dorothy's journey with even more whimsy and peculiar logic that feels distinctly pre-1920s American. It's like discovering the folk tale beneath the story you loved.

by Kate DiCamillo

DiCamillo has that same gift Baum possessed for making readers believe in mouse kingdoms and castle dungeons as completely real places. Where Oz feels like a dream-logic world, Despereaux's medieval setting has a storybook quality—the narrator even addresses you directly, the way classic fairy tales do. Both books trust young readers to follow complex emotional journeys without talking down to them.

by Norton Juster

This is for when you're ready for a book that plays with language the way Oz plays with geography. Juster sends a bored boy through kingdoms where puns are literal (the Mountains of Ignorance, the Doldrums) and every location teaches you something while delighting you. It shares Oz's episodic structure—a series of strange encounters that build toward understanding—but adds wordplay that rewards reading aloud.

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Here's the surprise pick: Burnett's novel has zero magic, yet it's deeply fantastical in how Sara Crewe transforms her boarding school attic into an imaginary realm through sheer imagination. Like Dorothy, Sara is displaced and must navigate a strange world, but Burnett explores how storytelling itself becomes the magic. It's grounded realism with an imaginative core—proof that wonder doesn't require wizards.

by Robin McKinley

McKinley writes fantasy for readers who've outgrown simple quests but aren't ready for dark complexity. Her heroine Harry discovers a magical world hidden within an ordinary colonial setting, and like Dorothy, she must learn the rules of a place that initially seems hostile. But McKinley goes deeper into how outsiders become insiders, and her worldbuilding has the specificity of a real culture rather than a dreamscape—it's Oz grown up and grounded.