My favorite character is Jack Pumpkinhead. Silly goes a long way with me.
My favorite book is the Marvelous Land of Oz. My Dad read the Baum Oz books to me and my sisters as young children, and Mombi scared us all. It may have been his delivery.
Favourite character must be Professor H. M. Wogglebug, T. E.
I love a good skewering of the over-educated fool.
I read all the Baums and some of the Thompsons (the ones my mother happened to own) exhaustively as a kid. So I guess the ones that are best are the ones where bits of them still stick in my mind, many years later:
-I loved the clever resolution of, I think, The Emerald City of Oz, where all the baddies are digging a tunnel that’s going to pop up in the garden of Ozma’s palace
-I loved Billina the hen wandering around the Nome King’s palace un-transforming all the Ozians
I certainly don’t remember, as a child, noticing a dropoff in quality between Baums and Thompsons. Who doesn’t love Terrybubble, the animated dinosaur skeleton?