The Patchwork Girl of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz is the seventh book in the Oz series by the American writer L. Frank Baum, first published on 1 July 1913 with illustrations by John R. Neill. Baum had tried to end the series two books earlier and was brought back to it by financial need.

Ojo, who is known as Ojo the Unlucky, lives in poverty in the woods of the Munchkin Country with his uncle Unc Nunkie, a man of very few words. Their neighbour is the magician Dr Pipt, who has spent six years preparing the magical Powder of Life, which can bring inanimate objects to life.

The powder brings a patchwork girl, Scraps, into being, and an accident at the magician's house leaves Ojo with a problem he can only solve by travelling across Oz to find what is required. Because the previous volume had arranged for Oz to be cut off from the outside world, Baum explains in his prologue that he contacted Dorothy by wireless telegraph and was given Ozma's permission to tell this story.