Patchwork Girl of Oz

While the last three books in L. Frank Baum's "Oz" series ("Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz", "The Road to Oz" and "The Emerald City of Oz") were all rather lackluster, this book was a return to form. The problem with the other installments was a lack of a new story -- they were all about people who went to Oz, met lots of strange and interesting people, and had a happy ending.
"The Patchwork Girl of Oz," however, had a very good story to bolster the old Oz formula. Ojo the Unlucky, a young Munchkin lad, along with the Glass Cat and Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, set out to find magical ingredients needed to restore his uncle and a magician's wife to life after they are accidentally petrified. So the story is, again, about someone wandering Oz and meeting strange and interesting people, but giving Ojo a quest gave the book a different angle, a sense of urgency -- this was a boy on a mission to save two lives.
The ending is somewhat abrupt, although quite in-character for Baum's creations, but overall it is one of the better Oz books, a real return to form after a few that just didn't click.