The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

L. Frank Baum, LibriVox volunteers · 1900 · 246 min

The book the 1939 film only borrows. Baum's Oz is harder-edged and funnier than the Technicolor one — the Tin Woodman's origin is dismemberment, the Scarecrow has been hanging on a pole long enough to have opinions about it, and Dorothy kills two witches without much ceremony either time. The famous silver shoes are silver here; the journey is the story, not a dream.

At four hours it is the shortest thing on the audio shelf and the best first audiobook for a child: short chapters, a joke every few pages, and a solo reader who keeps all twenty-four of them moving. The film vertical's 1925 and 1939 Oz films sit across the site from this — same cyclone, three different Americas.

Chosen reading: LibriVox solo production (version 2), Internet Archive item wizardofoz_pc_librivox — all 24 chapter files contiguously numbered (wonderfulwizardofoz_01_baum_64kb.mp3 … wonderfulwizardofoz_24_baum_64kb.mp3), 118 MB, 4 h 06 min total, catalogued 2011-09-06.

A deliberate choice of the straight solo reading over the site's several full-cast dramatic versions: those are adaptations with casting and script work, and this shelf reads books, not productions of them. Checked against the item's file table before staging: contiguous numbering, no gaps, no duplicates.

Listened through (2026-08-25): the solo reading runs all twenty-four chapters cleanly, and was chosen over the site's dramatic adaptations for exactly that plainness.

Two layers, both clear:

• The book. L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900; the text entered the US public domain in 1956 and every renewal question expired with its term.
• The narration. LibriVox dedicates its recordings to the public domain; the item carries a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 label. Recorded 2010–11 by volunteers credited in the project's own materials.