The Wizard of the Emerald City 1". The Wizard of the Emerald City The Wizard of the Emerald City () is a 1939 children's novel by Russian writer Alexander Melentyevich Volkov. The book is a re-narration of L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Baum's name is sometimes credited in the book (in the appendix by Volkov, which is found in some editions, where Volkov describes the origins of his book). The names of most characters are changed, some elements of Baum's novel are removed, and some new elements are added. The book was illustrated by Leonid Vladimirski in 1959 and became quite popular in
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz University Press of Kansas's "Kansas Centennial Edition", illustrated by Michael McCurdy with black-and-white illustrations, and Robert Sabuda's pop-up book. Baum wrote "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" without any thought of a sequel. After reading the novel, thousands of children wrote letters to him, requesting that he craft another story about Oz. In 1904, he wrote and published the first sequel, "The Marvelous Land of Oz", explaining that he grudgingly wrote the sequel to address the popular demand. Baum also wrote sequels in 1907, 1908, and 1909. In his 1911 "The Emerald City of Oz", he wrote that he could not