Alternate Titles to L. Frank Baum’s Oz Books

Titles are hard. Sometimes they’re the hardest part of a story. And you might go through several working titles before settling on one. I know this only too well, as a writer. And then even when you think you have the best title, your publisher could decide otherwise.

In the Facebook group Yellow Book Road: The Literary World of Oz, a contest was born out of a discussion I myself participated in, although Paul Dana deserves credit for the idea. The topic of the sometimes misleading titles to Oz books came up. Why is, for instance, The Scarecrow of Oz named after a character who doesn’t show up until two thirds of the way through the book? Tik-Tok of Oz has a similar issue, where the titular character is rather minor in the overall story, and isn’t present from the beginning. Even the very first book, whose title is so iconic, could be argued to have the same issue. The obvious answer of course is that either the author or the publisher thought the titles would sell more books. But in some cases, it amounts to false advertising. No one really seems to know a lot about Baum’s preferred titles, save for the first book which was originally going to be called The Emerald City. It has been documented that the next author in the series, Ruth Plumly Thompson, wasn’t always pleased with the titles publisher Reilly & Lee stuck her with either. So the contest that came out of all of this was to come up with our own titles for the first fourteen Oz books. I’ve thought about this topic before already, so I was eager to give it a shot. Here are my titles, besides the originals: 

Original Title - My Title

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Dorothy in the Land of Oz

The Marvelous Land of Oz - Tippetarius of Oz

Ozma of Oz - Dorothy in Ev

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz - Dorothy’s Adventures Underground

The Road to Oz - A Yellow Brick Road Trip

The Emerald City of Oz - Dorothy of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz - The Powder of Life

Tik-Tok of Oz - Queen Anne of Oz

The Scarecrow of Oz - Trot and Cap’n Bill in Oz

Rinkitink in Oz - Prince Inga and the Magic Pearls

The Lost Princess of Oz - The Magical Thief of Oz

The Tin Woodman of Oz - Hearts of Tin

The Magic of Oz - The Magic Word of Oz

Glinda of Oz - Dorothy and Ozma of Oz

Explanations 

As a rule, in books that weren’t named after the main character, I corrected the problem and included the actual main character’s name in the title. This was trickier for titles that didn’t really have that problem (Patchwork Girl and Tin Woodman for instance), so for those I had to be creative. I decided to go with accuracy over marketability, except in a couple minor instances as I will explain. 

For the first book, you have Dorothy and Oz in the title. The two main focuses of the story. The Wizard is rather minor compared to the four main characters, so he is taken out of the title. It lacks the snappy alliteration of the original title though, I admit. But it’s the best I can think of. 

 The second book was a challenge, but I decided to name it after the main character, without spoiling who they really are. 

The third book has Dorothy as the main character and mostly takes place in Ev, not Oz. So this title reflects that. As an aside, I like that the podcast The Chronicles of Oz chose to focus on Ozma as the main protagonist in their adaptation of Ozma of Oz because it justifies having her name in the title better. If you’ve never heard of that podcast you should check it out. 

The fourth book was another challenge; I never liked the clunky original title, which you could easily mistake for the title of the first book if you didn’t know any better (like I originally did), but coming up with a better title for this frankly bizarre story still wasn’t easy. I kinda borrowed the original working title of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for this. 

For the fifth book, I had heard The Road to Oz called this in a review somewhere and couldn’t resist using it. I know they aren’t on the Yellow Brick Road for most of it, but oh well. The book is basically a road trip story. 

The sixth book is when Dorothy and her family come to live in Oz. She becomes a citizen “of Oz”. She’s not just “in Oz” anymore, she’s no mere visitor. The title reflects that change in status.

The seventh book was another toughie because I think the original title is fine as is. But naming it after another central element to the story seemed appropriate here. I feel like it would be a good marketable title for a modern book. 

The eighth book was a simple fix. The story starts off focusing on Queen Anne of Oogaboo, and she plays a much bigger role than Tik-Tok. I could have also named it after Betsy Bobbin or the Shaggy Man, but I suppose I’m playing favorites. 

The Scarecrow of Oz really is a crossover story between Baum’s Trot and Cap’n Bill series, which was cancelled after two books, and his Oz series. If marketability wasn’t an issue maybe the book would have been named after them instead, since they’re the real protagonists.

Rinkitink in Oz really isn’t even an Oz book. It was originally an unpublished stand-alone fantasy novel that Baum hastily tacked an Oz-related ending onto so he could meet his yearly Oz book quota. King Rinkitink is barely in Oz at all until one of the last chapters. There was a rewrite released by the International Wizard of Oz club a few years ago retitled King Rinkitink. But Prince Inga is the real protagonist, with Rinkitink as more of a sidekick, and his Magic Pearls are central to the story. So I went with that.

I already liked the title of the eleventh book, The Lost Princess of Oz, so this one was hard. But I decided to name it after the antagonist who gets the plot rolling, who kidnaps Ozma and steals Oz’s most powerful magic artifacts. However I was careful not to spoil his identity in the title. 

The Tin Woodman of Oz was another hard one, as it is already a good title and the Tin Woodman is the central protagonist. I decided to take a more modern approach to the title. The Tin Woodman’s heart is very important to him. The “hearts” is plural because of Nimmie Amee’s second tin ex-boyfriend, Captain Fyter.

For The Magic of Oz, it was tempting to just call it Pyrzqxgl, which is the magic word of Oz. But no one would buy a book whose title they can’t even pronounce, as I learned when I titled my self-published book Odinochka (sigh......). Besides, if someone DID pronounce it correctly there’s a possibility they could turn themselves into a rock accidentally and never be able to turn back. So instead, my title is simply a more specific one than the original.

And finally, for the fourteenth and final Oz book by Baum, I simply changed the title to the two actual protagonists, because Glinda is more of a supporting character. It also highlights the unbreakable bond between Dorothy and Ozma, which has always kind of intrigued me; seems more than just a friendship. Also Dorothy’s name is first so that it doesn’t sound too similar to my title for the 6th book.

And there you have it. I’m sure a lot of the other Oz books could use different titles as well. Especially Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz, that was an awful title. But it will have to wait for a future contest I suppose.