Frank Baum wrote about the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy and her pet dog in the magical Land of Oz in 1900, he wanted to create a beautiful story based on the America he knew and treasured. But he had no idea his book would become a bestseller and grow into the cultural phenomenon that it is today.

In 1957, the director of Detroit’s libraries banned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for having “no value” for children of today, for supporting “negativism”, and for bringing children’s minds to a “cowardly level”.

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“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.”

Jerry Maren, 99, was the last surviving member of the group of actors who played munchkins in the classic 1939 film. Jerry Maren, the last surviving munchkin from The Wizard of Oz, has died aged 99. Boasting an entertainment career that spanned more than 70 years, Maren died at a nursing home in San Diego.

​a course of action that a person takes believing that it will lead to good things. It comes from the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz which Dorothy and her friends follow to the Emerald City.

Consider: The Yellow Brick Road is the path to enlightenment, with the characters encountering a variety of emblems of sin and temptation along the way toward the Emerald City, which is a kind of a heaven. ( In another reading, Oz itself can be heaven.) Also, the Wicked Witch is killed with water, suggesting baptism. (

Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple was MGM’s first choice to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz but she was under contract to 20th Century Fox. When a deal for her services could not be struck, MGM turned to one of its contract players, Judy Garland, who proved to be the perfect Dorothy!.

Oz Books by L. Frank Baum. There are fourteen books in the Wizard of Oz series by Baum , plus a book of short stories.

The Wizard of Oz is a 1987 adaptation by John Kane for the Royal Shakespeare Company based on the novel and 1939 film, which hews more closely to the film’s screenplay than the 1942 version. This show ran through 1989 and continues to be frequently revived and toured.

Oz books. The Wizard is one of the characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Unseen for most of the novel, he is the ruler of the Land of Oz and highly venerated by his subjects. Believing he is the only man capable of solving their problems, Dorothy and her friends travel to the Emerald City, the capital of Oz, to meet him.

―The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) The Wizard of Oz/Dorothys’ farmhouse in the Kansas cyclone. Kansas aka the “Sunflower State”, is a state within the United States of America. It also is the first setting the story takes place in L. Frank Baum’s first Oz book titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900.