The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Written in 1900 by L. Frank Baum.

EXCERPT: 

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with
Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's
wife.  Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be
carried by wagon many miles.  There were four walls, a floor and a
roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking
cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four
chairs, and the beds.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in
one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner.  There was
no garret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the
ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case
one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any
building in its path.  It was reached by a trap door in the middle
of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could
see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side.  Not a tree
nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to
the edge of the sky in all directions.  The sun had baked the
plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it.
Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of
the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen
everywhere.  Once the house had been painted, but the sun
blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the
house was as dull and gray as everything else.