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This is a book I read as a child, even before I saw the musical, and enjoyed a lot. However, my memory of it was overshadowed by the film. So it was a good experience to read it again as an adult.

The book is worth reading, not least because it differs in some major ways from the film adaptation. The biggest difference is that the whole dream sequence scenario, in which people from Kansas are transmogrified into figures of fantasy, is entirely absent. Dorothy wears Silver Shoes, not Ruby Slippers. And so on and so forth.

Baum says in the preface that he has tried to offer a modernized fairy tale: "[...] for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident."
[Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank) (2012-05-16). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (p. 4). Kindle Edition.]

While it's true that the story does not "point a moral," (at least not obviously), it fails at sanitizing away the "horrible and blood-curdling incidents." For example, the Winged Monkeys maul Dorothy's companions badly at one point. The Woodman tells a horrific back-story not included in the film, in which he undergoes unheard-of torture at the hands of the Wicked Witch of the East. The Lion faces some gruesome opponents, one of which is rather Tolkienesque in its monstrosity.

But there are charming episodes, comic touches and witty turns of phrase which give this children's classic an old-fashioned appeal, in spite of what Baum says about being modern.