When the first print of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came off the press in May 1900, Baum was there to compile the pages. Baum assembled the first copy of the book himself. When Aunt Em asks Dorothy where she came from, she says that she was in the Land of Oz, then adds, “I'm so glad to be at home again!' (“There’s no place like home” is a movie line.) 8. And while Oz turns out to be a dream in the movie, it’s a real place in the book. The book doesn’t end with the wizard taking off in a hot air balloon-Dorothy travels south to find Glinda and has more adventures. Other differences between the movie and the book: Dorothy doesn’t meet Glinda until the end rather, the Good Witch of the North is the one to greet her when she comes to Oz. In the book, Dorothy is given “silver shoes with pointed toes.” The color was changed for the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland because the filmmakers thought that ruby red looked better in Technicolor. Dorothy’s shoes were silver, not ruby red. Along the way, she meets a host of almost-forgotten characters, such as the Queen of the Field Mice, people made out of china, and the Kalidahs-creatures with the bodies of bears and the heads of tigers. Periodically she goes off the road, has an adventure, then returns and continues her journey.

Throughout the book, Dorothy follows a yellow brick road, which runs straight through the story. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an episodic novel. The writer Gore Vidal suggested this disaster may have inspired the setting of Baum’s book. In 1893, a cyclone ripped through the state, killing 31 people and destroying two towns. He’d been to Kansas only once when he and Maud were touring with his melodrama ' The Maid of Arran.' He may have picked Kansas because of the tornado that sweeps Dorothy away. Baum never lived in Kansas.īaum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Chicago. The character Dorothy was Baum’s tribute to the lost baby girl. She died in November 1898, right as Baum was writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Dorothy Gale was named after a niece who died.ĭorothy Gale is based on Dorothy Gage, the infant niece of Baum’s wife, Maud. There were three drawers marked “A to G,” “H to N,” and “O to Z.” And so Oz was born. Then one day he found himself looking at the filing cabinet in his study. He got the name “Oz” from his filing cabinet.Īt first, Baum had trouble coming up with a name for the magical land Dorothy visits. On the attached paper he scrawled, “With this pencil I wrote the manuscript of The Emerald City.” 2. He must have been proud of his work, for he framed the pencil stub and hung it on the wall of his study. Frank Baum-former chicken rancher, traveling salesman, and theater manager-had already published two successful children’s books when he started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1898.

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