Oh you mentioned so many favorites - The Shaggy Man was a huge favorite in our house and Ruggedo, the Nome King....I wonder if his character is the most popular, he was in so many books. And Kabumpo and The Hungry Tiger and Pigasus, and the horse-- what the heck? Who's horse was it? Peter's, I think? He was a cab horse - was his name Jim? I loved him sooo much.
Looking over the books, I realize that there were far more favorites -
The Magic of Oz, in which everyone went looking for a gift for Ozma's birthday.
Rinkitink of Oz, which was another "outside of Oz" book - I guess I liked traveling further and further away from Oz itself - I must have liked the descriptions of new lands.
The Road to Oz had the beautiful Polychrome, I was just in love with her picture.
The Royal Book of Oz....
This is making me want to read them over again. I have less vivid memories of the Plumly Thompson books, although the
Hungry Tiger made a big impression on me with his love of fat babies. I have a few of the Baum books on my bookshelf, I should try reading them again, if they don't crumble into bits....
I also had another Baum book -
Animal Fairy Tales - which had short stories in it - the best one was
The Pea Green Poodle.
There was another story, which I remember vividly, about a young prince who was so greedy for sweets that his father, the king took him to an island made out of cake, in an ocean of soda pop or something like it. He ate and ate till he was sick to death of sweets and finally learned his lesson. I wanted to go there so badly - we were never allowed sweets at all when we were kids and it sounded so exotic.
