Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz is a modern Oz book by Michael Morpurgo with illustrations by Emma Chichester Clark. It was published on 12 September 2017 and has a similar premise to Sylvia Patience's Toto's Tale and True Chronicle of Oz, as Toto relays his side of events in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz story.
Description[]
“I was there” Papa Toto said, and those magic words sent shivers down my spine. It was going to be the Wizard story. “Dorothy and me were both there.” We were all silent, snuggled up together, waiting, waiting. Then Papa Toto began…
When a twister descends on their Kansas farm, Toto and his owner Dorothy hide in the house – only to be plucked into the air and whisked away!
Coming down with a crash in the mysterious land of Oz, the pair meet a series of extraordinary characters: a scarecrow who believes he has no brains, a tin man without a heart, and a Cowardly Lion who may not be as cowardly as he thinks he is.
But Toto and Dorothy are desperate to return home – after all, home is home, and home is best! So they set off with their new friends on a journey down the yellow brick road to find the only person who might be able to help them: the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
But what they find might surprise them. And on the way, all of them will learn that what they think they are missing might have been there, all along…
Notable details[]
Morpurgo's story diverges from Baum a bit more than Patience's version. In both works, the Wildcat is not killed, but merely frightened off. The Good Witch of the North says that she had a sister, the Good Witch of the South, who was killed fighting the Wicked Witches. The Scarecrow's farmer likes to talk to him, but treats him as a slave until Dorothy frees him. The Woodman says his sweetheart's name is Angelina rather than Nimmie Amee, and that it was her mother (rather than her indentured mistress) who paid the Wicked Witch of the East to cause his accident. The biggest departures come after the group's return to the Emerald City. The Wizard, who used the stage name Ozzy Mandias in Omaha, says that he could give the Scarecrow a prosthetic brain, the Tin Woodman a prosthetic heart, and the Lion a placebo potion, but they have the true qualities inside them, so this is unnecessary. Then the Wizard takes Dorothy and Toto in his balloon and deposits them in Kansas, before seeking out his old home in Omaha where he intends to rejoin the circus.
Film Project[]
It was reported in 2020 that Warner Brothers is planning an animated musical adaptation of the book. Wiki Notice: Per the long title, it might be renamed so the placeholder page is Toto (film) until the official name is given.