Wednesday, September 23, 2009

L. Frank Baum biographies

A profile of the creator of Oz, derived from some recently published biographies, over at Slate. This strikes a chord with me personally. When my daughter was young, I read every single Oz book aloud to her (including Oz books not by Baum, and a lot of other non-Oz Baum books as well). I enjoyed every minute of that experience.

Slate: The story of the orphaned Dorothy Gale, whisked by a tornado away from gray, impoverished Kansas to the magical land of Oz, captured the hearts of children and adults who had lived through an economic crisis but saw all around them the thrum of invention and change. As a young country abuzz with "progress," the United States needed a different kind of fairy tale. A truly American myth could not merely invoke Celtic wraiths or Bavarian dark forest goblins. It would have to include the drive to innovate that launched the Gilded Age and made America the archetypal modern industrial nation during the very decades when Baum's imagination was formed.... More.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think L Frank Baum is a brill author and I just love the films also.