You just have to test them.'ĭorothy's tenacity and self-reliance make her 'probably the first typical American girl' in children's literature, says Hearn. And I think Baum's emphasizing this: that you have the powers within you all along. They all have the gifts that they seek, they just don't have a tangible symbol of what they want. 'You see that with the Scarecrow, too, and the Cowardly Lion. but he was emphasizing self-reliance,' says Hearn. 'I think that Baum was dealing with irony. Denslow was the first to draw Dorothy's now-iconic companions, pictured on the cover of the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. You know, it's also possible that Toto was born in America, and dogs in America don't talk.' Of course, Oz is a place where animals talk - the Cowardly Lion has no problem speaking. Frank Baum later explained that in Tik-Tok of Oz, the seventh Oz book, Toto was actually asked why he never talked in Oz,' Hearn says. Afterward, the students posed a few questions for Baum, which Hearn takes a stab at answering. So you're traveling with that child, and seeing all these wonders as she's discovering them.'Ī group of second-graders from Cottage Hill Elementary School in Grass Valley, Calif., read the book and tagged along on Dorothy's adventures. 'You always saw what happened in Oz through Dorothy's eyes. 'The strange characters, the strange things that happen, but it always was from a child's point of view,' he says. Hearn says the Oz books - the title of which came from a label on one of Baum's filing drawers for letters O-Z - immediately captured his imagination. Among other things, he is the editor of The Annotated Wizard of Oz, a special centennial edition of the book that looks at the history, the trivia and the personal story of L. 'To write fairy stories for children,' he wrote, 'to amuse them, to divert restless children, sick children, to keep them out of mischief on rainy days, seems of greater importance than to write grown-up novels.'įew know more about Baum and his Oz books than children's book historian Michael Patrick Hearn.

Frank Baum worked as everything from a traveling salesman to a breeder of fancy thoroughbred fowls. Before The Wonderful Wizard of Oz secured his place in American letters, L.

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