The Wonder Years
Intertitle
Format	Comedy-drama
Created by	Carol Black Neal Marlens
Starring	Fred Savage Dan Lauria Alley Mills Olivia d'Abo Jason Hervey Danica McKellar Josh Saviano
Narrated by	Daniel Stern
Theme music composer	Lennon–McCartney
Opening theme	"With a Little Help from My Friends" Performed by Joe Cocker
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	6
No. of episodes	115 (List of episodes)
Production
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	22–24 minutes
Production company(s)	The Black-Marlens Company New World Television
Distributor	Turner Program Services (Original) 20th Century Fox (Current)[1]
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	January 31, 1988 (1988-01-31) – May 12, 1993 (1993-05-12)

The Wonder Years is an American television comedy-drama created by Carol Black and Neal Marlens. It ran for six seasons on ABC from 1988 through 1993. The pilot aired on January 31, 1988 after ABC's coverage of Super Bowl XXII.^[2][3][3][4]

The show achieved a spot in the Nielsen Top Thirty for four of its six seasons.^[5] TV Guide named the show one of the 20 best of the 1980s.^[5] After only six episodes aired, The Wonder Years won an Emmy for best comedy series in 1988.^[5] In addition, at age 13, Fred Savage became the youngest actor ever nominated as Outstanding Lead Actor for a Comedy Series. The show was also awarded a Peabody Award in 1989, for achieving two seemingly contradictory effects: evoking a traditional family sitcom while pushing boundaries and using new modes of storytelling.^[6] In total, the series won 22 awards and received another 54 nominations for various awards.^[7] In 1997, "My Father's Office" was ranked #29 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.^[8]

Plot synopsis[link]

The series depicts the social and family life of a boy in a typical American suburb from 1968 to 1973, covering his ages of 12 through 17. Each year in the series is presented as having taken place 20 years before the original air dates (1988 to 1993).

The plot centers on Kevin Arnold, son of Jack and Norma Arnold. Kevin's dad holds a management job at NORCOM, a defense contractor, while his mother is a homemaker. Kevin also has an older brother, Wayne, and an older sister, Karen. Two of Kevin's age peers and neighbors are prominently featured throughout the series: his best friend, Paul Pfeiffer, and his crush-turned-girlfriend Gwendolyn "Winnie" Cooper. Story lines are told through Kevin's reflections as an adult in his mid-30s, voiced by narrator Daniel Stern.

In the pilot episode, Winnie's older brother Brian, whom Kevin looks up to, is killed in action in Vietnam in 1968. Kevin meets Winnie in a nearby wooded area called Harpers Woods, and they end up sharing their first kiss. This unsaid relationship between Winnie and Kevin remains dormant for a long while, with Winnie starting to date a popular 8th grader named Kirk McCray, and Kevin briefly going steady with Becky Slater (played by Crystal McKellar—Danica's sister). After Kevin breaks up with Becky due to his feelings for Winnie, Becky becomes a recurring nuisance for Kevin. Winnie eventually dumps Kirk as well, and Kevin and Winnie share a second kiss at the start of the 1969 summer vacation. Around Valentine's Day 1970, Winnie temporarily dates Paul, who has broken up with his girlfriend Carla. Winnie and Kevin start dating each other soon after.

Just before the summer break, Winnie and her family move to a house four miles away. Although Winnie attends a new school, Lincoln Junior High, she and Kevin decide to remain together and maintain a successful long distance relationship. A beautiful new student named Madeline Adams joins Kevin's school and quickly catches Kevin's eye, but it is Winnie who breaks up with Kevin after meeting Roger, a typical jock-type at her new school. Neither relationship lasts long, but Winnie and Kevin don't reunite until she is injured in a car accident. After graduating from Junior High, Kevin and Winnie both go to McKinley High and Paul attends a prep school. Paul would later transfer to McKinley High and join Kevin and Winnie.

Earlier seasons of the show tended to focus on plots involving events within the Arnold household and Kevin's academic struggles, whereas later seasons focused much more on plots involving dating and Kevin's friends.

Kevin has several brief flings during the summer of 1971 and the 1971/72 academic year. After Kevin's grandfather gets his driver's license revoked, he sells his car to Kevin for a dollar. Paul transfers to McKinley High after his first semester at prep school when his father runs into financial troubles. Winnie and Kevin are reunited when they go on a double date to a school dance and find themselves more attracted to each other than their respective partners. Facing peer pressure in the episode "White Lies", Kevin implies to his friends that he has had sex with Winnie, but the spreading rumor causes Kevin and Winnie to break up for a few episodes. In late 1972, Kevin's older brother Wayne starts working at NORCOM, and starts dating his co-worker Bonnie, a divorcee with a son, but the relationship does not last. Kevin's dad quits NORCOM, and starts up a furniture manufacturing business.

Final episode and epilogue[link]

In the finale double episode, Winnie decides to take a job for the summer of 1973 as a lifeguard at a resort. Kevin, anxious to experience a taste of adult life, plans a cross-country trip with his friends. Kevin's dad, Jack, vehemently objects to Kevin's plan and ultimately Kevin abandons his planned trip. Kevin returns to his job at his father's furniture factory and telephones Winnie, who by all accounts is distant and seems to be enjoying her time away from Kevin. Eventually, Kevin and his father fight and Kevin announces that he is leaving, reasoning that he needs to "find himself." Kevin hops in his car and heads to the resort where Winnie is working, hopeful that she can secure him a job and they can spend the rest of the summer together.^[9][10]

Much to Kevin's chagrin, Winnie does not appear too pleased with Kevin's arrival and maintains her distance. Kevin is finally able to secure a job at the resort's restaurant and resides in the bus boys' dorm. Feeling confused and frustrated over Winnie's behavior, Kevin searches out other activities to occupy his time. Kevin decides to play poker with the resort's in-house band members. Kevin wins big (by bluffing while only holding a pair of 2s) and goes searching for Winnie, anxious to share the tale of his good fortune. When Kevin finds her, Winnie is engaged in a passionate kiss with a male lifeguard.

The next day, Kevin confronts Winnie about her actions, and they fight. The fallout with Winnie leads Kevin to play another round of poker with the band. This time Kevin ends up losing everything, including his car. Desperate, Kevin confronts Winnie and her new beau at the restaurant and ends up punching him in the face. Kevin then leaves the resort on foot.

On a desolate stretch of highway, Kevin decides to begin hitchhiking. He finally gets picked up by an elderly couple and much to his surprise he finds Winnie in the backseat. Winnie was fired over the fight Kevin instigated at the resort. Kevin and Winnie begin to argue and the elderly couple gets fed up and kicks them out of the car. A flash rain storm begins and Kevin and Winnie search for shelter. They find a barn and discuss how much things are changing and the prospects for the future. At first Winnie tells Kevin that she doesn't see them ending up together but quickly recants, telling Kevin "I don't want it to end." Kevin moves over to Winnie's side as she extends her blanket to Kevin and they share a passionate kiss. The adult Kevin narrates that night they made a promise to always be together and "it was a promise full of passion." The general implication is that the two have sex for the first time in the barn.

They soon find their way back to their hometown and arrive hand-in-hand to a Fourth of July parade. During this parade, the adult Kevin (Daniel Stern) describes the fate of the show's main characters. Kevin makes up with his father, graduates high school in 1974 and leaves for college and later becomes a writer. Paul studies law at Harvard. Karen, Kevin's sister, gives birth to a son in September 1973. Kevin's mother becomes a businesswoman and board chairman. Kevin's father dies of a Heart Attack in 1975, and Wayne takes over his father's furniture business. Winnie studies art history in Paris while Kevin stays in the United States. Winnie and Kevin end up writing to each other once a week for the next eight years. When Winnie returns to the United States in 1982, Kevin meets her at the airport with his wife and eight month old son.

The final sounds, voice-over and dialogue of the episode and series, is that of Kevin (Daniel Stern) providing concluding narration with the sound of children playing in the background:

Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house, like a lot of houses. A yard like a lot of other yards. On a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back...with wonder.

A little boy (Stern's real life son) can be heard asking his dad to come out and play catch during a break in the final narration. Kevin's (Daniel Stern) narrative responds, "I'll be right there" as the episode closes.

In 2011, the finale was ranked #11 on the TV Guide Network special, TV's Most Unforgettable Finales.^[11]

Setting[link]

Co-creator Neal Marlens wanted the setting to be Huntington, Long Island, where he grew up. ABC insisted that the location remain nonspecific (the colloquial "Anywhere, USA").^[12] The production team endeavored to ensure that the suburb's name and location within the United States were never specified, but there are occasional, conflicting clues.^[13][14]

In the opening scene of the Pilot, Kevin and his family pose in front of their house at 516 University Ave, Burbank, CA. In the season 3 episode "Wayne on Wheels", the address on Wayne's DMV envelope reads "Culver City, 90230, CA". The writer of the episode, Mark B. Perry, has stated on Usenet that the crew member who created the envelope mistakenly used the address of the filming location.^[15][16] Similarly, other incidental visual details suggest that the setting is California. In another third season episode, entitled "The Family Car", a California license plate can be seen on the Arnolds' car as Kevin's father is shown repairing it. In one episode, Kevin displays his driver's license issued by the "State of California". When Kevin's high school basketball team advances to the state championship, the game is played in a large arena with a Los Angeles Lakers logo on the floor.

A few elements hint at the show being set in the New York City area, as evidenced by Kevin's New York Jets jacket, though Paul reveals in the episode Nemesis that Kevin has never been to a Jets game in his life. The show also features frequent references to the New York Mets. In episode 3 of season 1, "My Father's Office" Jack says "I can't believe they lost to the Senators" referring to a news report that the New York Yankees lost an extra inning game to the Washington Senators. In episode 16 of season 4 entitled "Road Trip", Kevin and his father get lost and end up in Hillsdale, New York when they thought they were in Loudonville, New York which is conceivable considering that those two towns are within 50 miles of each other and both located near Albany, NY. In the episode "Back To The Lake", Paul's directions for returning home include taking Interstate 91, which runs through Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont; the trip takes only a few hours. Adding to the confusion is the fact that in a few episodes, palm trees are clearly visible in the background, yet in one episode Winnie says that it might snow. In Season 6, Episode 11 titled "New Years", Kevin has a chance to go to a New Year's Eve party at a Colorado ski lodge, which he says is just two hours away.

Characters[link]

Major[link]

• Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage): Character born March 18, 1956, Kevin grew up in the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s.^[17] The voice of Kevin as an adult (and the show's narrator) is supplied by Daniel Stern. (115 episodes)
• John "Jack" Arnold (Dan Lauria): Character born on November 5, 1927 - Died in the year 1975, Kevin's father, was a laconic man and a Korean War veteran; he mentions having grown up during the Great Depression and having been in the US Marine Corps and he is seen in photographs wearing the uniform of a First Lieutenant. He works at NORCOM, a large electronics corporation in a middle management position he loathes. Later, he starts his own business, building and selling handcrafted furniture. The last episode reveals that he dies in 1975, around the end of Kevin's freshman year of college i.e. two years after the time of the show's finale. (Though this directly contradicts the narrative script of a previous episode where an adult Kevin says his father would later be the grandfather of Kevin's sons.) His character was meant to be a reflection of the older and more conservative generation with the ideology of the Second World War / 1950s era being confused and angered by the changing world and ideologies of the 1960s that were becoming mainstream at that point.
• Norma Arnold (Alley Mills): Kevin's stay-at-home mother. Unlike her husband Jack, she is friendly and upbeat. She met Jack as a college freshman. When he graduated, she moved across the country with him and didn't finish college. She eventually gets her degree late in the series, and starts working at a software startup called Micro Electronics. She is shown to be more moderate (in contrast with her more conservative husband) and increasingly becoming bored and yearning to break away from her homemaker role hence reflecting the rise of feminism in the 1960s. (100 episodes)
• Karen Arnold (Olivia d'Abo): Kevin's older, hippie sister. She continually clashes with her overbearing father due to her free-spirited ways and his traditional views while her mother usually acts as the mediator. She has a falling out with her father when she moves in with her boyfriend Michael (David Schwimmer) during her freshman year of college. A year later, the pair get married in an outdoor wedding and move to Alaska, where Michael has secured a good job. Karen ultimately has accepted some of the conservative lifestyle of her parents by having a baby and a husband who realizes the importance of hard work to support his wife and child. (67 episodes)
• Wayne Arnold (Jason Hervey): Kevin's older brother, who enjoys physically tormenting Kevin and Paul. One of his nicknames for Kevin is "butthead," which he calls him usually while picking on him. He takes over the furniture business when his father dies. Wayne is typically portrayed as a loser when it comes to serious romantic relationships. For a time he did date a girl named Dolores, but that was a more casual relationship than most others. In later seasons, Wayne shows a little more maturity. In the final season, he begins a serious relationship with a divorcee named Bonnie but is left heartbroken when she reconciles with her husband. (102 episodes)
• Paul Joshua Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano): Kevin's long time best friend, an intelligent and excellent student. He is allergic to several substances. Paul is Jewish, which is the focus of an episode where he has his Bar Mitzvah. While Kevin and Paul are best friends in the early seasons, their relationship becomes somewhat strained in later seasons. Kevin begins to hang around Chuck and Jeff more and this causes tension with Paul. On one episode, Kevin forces Paul against his will to take a trip with him to a cabin town to reconnect with his summer fling, Cara. On another episode after Paul loses his virginity, Kevin gets jealous and blabs to the guys which causes further tension with Paul. In the final episode it is revealed that he goes to Harvard University. There is an urban myth that Saviano grew up to be shock rocker Marilyn Manson, however this is untrue; Saviano is currently an attorney with the firm Morrison Cohen LLP.^[18] (94 episodes)
• Gwendolyn "Winnie" Cooper (Danica McKellar): Kevin's main love interest. In an episode entitled "The Accident" and in the final episode, it is stated that every important event in Kevin's life somehow involves Winnie. She lives on the same block as Kevin. Their first kiss and her older brother's death while serving as a soldier in the Vietnam War play an important part of the pilot episode. In one episode, her parents separate over their grief of the death of their son. In the epilogue of the final episode, it is revealed that Winnie goes on to study art history in Paris. Kevin and Winnie write a letter to each other every week for eight years until she returns; in the last moments of the finale Kevin states that when Winnie returned to the States Kevin met her along with his wife and first child. This caused much grief amongst Wonder Years fans due to a large following of people wanting a Kevin and Winnie pairing. However, Kevin does state near the end of his final narration: "Like I said, things never turn out exactly the way you plan them." (88 episodes)

Minor characters[link]

• Randy Mitchell (Michael Tricario): Kevin's friend, described as loyal and brave, though noticeably lacking Paul's intelligence. (He gets a 730 combined score on his SATs.) Though he appeared throughout the entire series, he usually had only minor parts in episodes. Randy and Paul are the only characters to remain on throughout the series as Kevin's friends in both junior high and high school. (21 episodes)
• Doug Porter (Brandon Crane): Kevin's junior high school classmate. In one episode, he briefly replaces Paul as Kevin's best friend after the two have a falling out. Doug is very agreeable and loves to eat junk food. In later episodes Doug befriends both Kevin and Paul where they engage in activities such as touch football or sneaking to a sleepover attended by older teenage girls. (19 episodes)
• Chuck Coleman (Andy Berman): One of Kevin's high school friends, who often appears with a "nervous tic". Chuck dates Alice Pedermeir and, on one episode, confides that he may have gotten her pregnant. However, much to his relief, the pregnancy test turns out negative. On another episode, Chuck punches Kevin in the face after he catches Kevin in a compromising position with Alice, who was helping Kevin to get a good deal on a used car. (19 episodes)
• Brett (Jon Frear): Kevin's classmate. He was featured a few times during the series. 1992–1993. (19 episodes)
• Coach Ed Cutlip (Robert Picardo): Kevin's gym teacher, who excels in bullying his students and always wears a red cap to hide his bald head, which has a steel plate in it. He enjoys drawing diagrams on the board that nobody can decipher. Kevin describes him as having an inferiority complex. However, he is shown to be somewhat of a more sensitive person than usually indicated when he plays a department store Santa in a Christmas-related episode, where Kevin is the only student to know of Coach Cutlip's part-time job. Coach Cutlip is also aware of his mean personality towards the students, and admits to Kevin, "kids like me when I am Santa". (15 episodes)
• Jeff Billings (Giovanni Ribisi): Plays Kevin's good friend in the later part of the series. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother, which is the reason that he moves in late. He has a girlfriend from his old town but breaks it off with her midway through the final season.(15 episodes)
• Ricky Halsenbach (Scott Nemes): Kevin's classmate. He was Kevin's first friend to get a driver's license. He fell in love with a new student named Haley but broke it off with her after Kevin and Jeff made fun of the size of her nose. (13 episodes)
• Carla Healy (Krista Murphy): Kevin's junior high school classmate and one-time girlfriend of Paul. (12 episodes)
• Mr. Cantwell (Ben Stein): Kevin's junior high school science teacher. He often shows filmstrips to the class while speaking in a monotone voice with steady emotion. (12 episodes)
• Rebecca "Becky" Slater (Crystal McKellar, sister of Danica McKellar): Kevin's junior high school classmate and one-time girlfriend. He dates her purely to make Winnie jealous and she punches him when she finds out he still likes Winnie. She holds a grudge against Kevin and becomes a recurring nuisance throughout junior high school. Her character is physically aggressive and hostile towards men. (10 episodes)
• Mr. Diperna (Raye Birk): The principal of Robert F. Kennedy Junior High. In the earlier episodes, Kevin gets in trouble and spends time in his office. He fires Kevin's mom shortly after she is hired by the school as a receptionist. (10 episodes)
• Craig Hobson (Sean Baca): Kevin's junior high school classmate and friend. He often teases Kevin and Paul over their emotional hang-ups resulting from girlfriend problems, only to accidentally start a relationship himself by falling for Becky Slater when she hits him with her bicycle (her intended victim was Kevin). Craig's relationship with Becky stops her from harassing Kevin and allows the couples to happily co-exist. However, Hobson ends the relationship with Becky when he gets sent to military school for his ninth grade year, reviving her hatred of men and blaming Kevin. (10 episodes)

Broadcast history[link]

Ratings[link]

Syndication[link]

Reruns of the show aired in syndication between September 1992 and September 1997. Nick at Nite then reran the show from October 13, 1997 to February 3, 2001.^[19] The show was later rerun on ABC Family from 2001 to 2004. It was also seen on Ion Television from April 2 to October 4, 2007. As of October 10, 2010, The Wonder Years can be seen each evening on the cable network The Hub. In Canada, the show aired on CTS Ontario from September 2010 until September 2, 2011. In Australia, the show aired on ABC1 on 31 March 2012.

Home video releases[link]

Unlike most long-running popular American television series, The Wonder Years has still not yet been released on DVD as official season box sets, allegedly due to music licensing issues.^[20] Because of this, The Wonder Years routinely appears high on the list of TV shows in-demand for a DVD release.^[21][22][23] Some episodes of the series were included in two official "best-of" DVD sets (The Best of The Wonder Years and The Christmas Wonder Years) without the original music.^[22][24] Anchor Bay also released two volumes (four episodes total) on VHS in 1997.^[25]

In a blog update on the Netflix website on March 30, 2011,^[26] and a press release issued the next day,^[27] Netflix stated that they would be adding The Wonder Years to their instant streaming service. The other three 20th Century Fox series noted as part of the deal were added to the Watch Instantly service by April 2,^[28][29][30] while The Wonder Years remained unavailable. On October 1, 2011,^[31] 114 full-length episodes of the series were added to Netflix streaming. The clip show from the end of Season 4, which was released on DVD, has not been included.^[32]

On September 26, 2011 it was announced that Amazon Prime's streaming video service would be adding The Wonder Years, describing the series as "available on digital video for the first time",^[33] although Netflix added the series ahead of Amazon's release. All 115 episodes (including the clip show) became available to Prime members starting October 6, 2011.^[34]

On both digital streaming services, portions of the soundtrack have been replaced. The show's opening theme, Joe Cocker's rendition of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends," has been replaced on Netflix^[35] and Amazon with the version of the song that played in UK and other overseas airings. The majority of the show's soundtrack remains unchanged. Songs such as "Light My Fire" by The Doors and "Foxy Lady" by Jimi Hendrix have been replaced by generic sound-alikes with different lyrics.

Soundtrack[link]

The official soundtrack was released in 1988 by Atlantic/WEA and contains a total of 13 tracks, featuring Joe Cocker's cover of The Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends", which is the show's theme song.^[36]

Also, after the series' original run was over, Laserlight Digital released a 5-disc compilation box set under the title "Music from 'The Wonder Years'" in 1994. This is the same company that later released the only two DVDs for the series, The Best of The Wonder Years and The Christmas Wonder Years. The disc included 40 oldies favorites and 5 original songs (each is repeated twice in the set) written exclusively for the series by W.G. Walden.

References[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Wonder Years

External links[link]

• The Wonder Years at the Internet Movie Database
• The Wonder Years at TV.com

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Original title page.
Author(s)	L. Frank Baum
Illustrator	W. W. Denslow
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	The Oz Books
Genre(s)	Fantasy Children's novel
Publisher	George M. Hill Company
Publication date	17 May 1900
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback), Audiobook
Pages	259 p., 21 leaves of plates (first edition hardcover)
ISBN	N/A
OCLC Number	9506808
Followed by	The Marvelous Land of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of both the 1902 stage play and the well-known 1939 film version. The story chronicles the adventures of a young girl named Dorothy Gale in the Land of Oz, after being swept away from her Kansas farm home in a storm. Thanks in part to the 1939 MGM movie, it is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its initial success, and the success of the popular 1902 Broadway musical which Baum adapted from his original story, led to Baum's writing thirteen more Oz books. The original book has been in the public domain in the US since 1956.

Baum dedicated the book "to my good friend & comrade, My Wife", Maud Gage Baum. In January 1901, George M. Hill Company, the publisher, completed printing the first edition, which probably totaled around 35,000 copies. Records indicate that 21,000 copies were sold through 1900.^{[citation needed]} Historians, economists and literary scholars have examined and developed possible political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; however, the majority of the reading public simply takes the story at face value.

1900 first edition cover, George M. Hill, Chicago, New York.

Back cover.

Background[link]

Born on May 15, 1856, in a frame house in Chittenango, New York, Lyman Frank Baum was the seventh child of Cynthia Stanton and Benjamin Ward Baum, an affluent oil baron.^[1] Raised in Rose Lawn, the Baum country property on the outskirts of Syracuse, Baum had a sheltered upbringing. As a child, he was extremely bashful and was diagnosed with a deficient heart.^[2][3] Baum spent considerable time playing with his imaginary friends and reading books.^[3] When he was 15 years old, he and Harry, a younger brother produced The Rose Lawn Home Journal.^[4] When he was 18 years old, Baum spent much time around local theaters and hoped to pursue acting. Though his father initially opposed his dream he later capitulated. Baum traveled through different states and worked at various jobs to support his acting career.^{[5][nb 1]}

In 1882, Baum married Maud Gage, daughter of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. His mother-in-law believed that Baum was idealistic and wrote in a letter that he was "a perfect baby". However, she urged him to put to paper the many tales he had related to his sons for many years. Maud Gage, a practical woman, served as a foil to Baum. She was consistent and wary of their finances, complementing her husband, an imaginative dreamer.^[3]

Publication[link]

The book was published by George M. Hill Company. Its first edition had a printing of 10,000 copies and was sold in advance of the publication date of September 1, 1900. On May 17, 1900 the first copy of the book came off the press; Baum assembled it by hand and presented it to his sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster. The public saw the book for the first time at a book fair at the Palmer House in Chicago, July 5–20. The book's copyright was registered on August 1; full distribution followed in September.^[6] By October 1900, the first edition had already sold out and the second edition of 15,000 copies was nearly depleted.^[7]

In a letter to his brother Harry, Baum wrote that the book's publisher, George M. Hill, predicted a sale of about 250,000 copies. In spite of this favorable conjecture, Hill did not initially predict the book would be phenomenally successful. He agreed to publish the book only when the manager of the Grand Opera House, Fred R. Hamlin, committed to making The Wizard of Oz into a play to publicize the novel.^{[nb 2]} After Hill's publishing company became bankrupt in 1901, Baum and Denslow agreed to have the Indianapolis-based Bobbs-Merrill Company resume publishing the novel.^[8]

Baum's son Harry Neal told the Chicago Tribune in 1944 that he told his children "whimsical stories before they became material for his books". Harry called his father the "swellest man I knew", a man who was able to give a decent reason as to why black birds cooked in a pie could afterwards get out and sing.^[9]

By 1938, over one million copies of the book had been printed.^[10] Less than two decades later, in 1956, the sales of his novel grew to 3 million copies in print.^[8]

Plot summary[link]

Dorothy is a young orphaned girl raised by her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm. She has a little black dog Toto, who is her sole source of happiness on the dry, gray prairies. One day the farmhouse, with Dorothy and Toto inside, is caught up in a cyclone and deposited in a field in Munchkin Country, the eastern quadrant of the Land of Oz. The falling house kills the evil ruler of the Munchkins, the Wicked Witch of the East.

The Good Witch of the North comes with the Munchkins to greet Dorothy and gives Dorothy the silver shoes (believed to have magical properties) that the Wicked Witch had been wearing when she was killed. In order to return to Kansas, the Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy that she will have to go to the "Emerald City" or "City of Emeralds" and ask the Wizard of Oz to help her. Before she leaves, the Good Witch of the North kisses her on the forehead, giving her magical protection from trouble.

On her way down the road of yellow bricks, Dorothy frees the Scarecrow from the pole he is hanging on, restores the movements of the rusted Tin Woodman with an oil can, and encourages them and the Cowardly Lion to journey with her and Toto to the Emerald City. The Scarecrow wants to get a brain, the Tin Woodman a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, courage. All four of the travelers believe that the Wizard can solve their troubles. The party finds many adventures on their journey together, including overcoming obstacles such as narrow pieces of the yellow brick road, vicious Kalidahs, a river, and the Deadly Poppies.

When the travelers arrive at the Emerald City, they are asked to wear green spectacles by the Guardian of the Gates as long as they remain in the city. The four are the first to ever successfully meet with the Wizard. When each traveler meets with the Wizard, he appears each time as someone or something different. To Dorothy, the Wizard is a giant head; the Scarecrow sees a beautiful woman; the Tin Woodman sees a ravenous beast; the Cowardly Lion sees a ball of fire. The Wizard agrees to help each of them--but only if one of them kills the Wicked Witch of the West who rules over the western Winkie Country. The Guardian of the Gates warns them that no one has ever managed to harm the very cunning and cruel Wicked Witch.

As the friends travel across the Winkie Country, the Wicked Witch sends wolves, crows, bees, and then her Winkie soldiers to attack them, but they manage to get past them all. Then, using the power of the Golden Cap, the Witch summons the Winged Monkeys to capture Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion and Toto, and to destroy the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman.

The Wicked Witch melts, from the W. W. Denslow illustration of the first edition (1900).

When the Wicked Witch gains one of Dorothy's silver shoes by trickery, Dorothy in anger grabs a bucket of water and throws it on the Wicked Witch. To her shock, this causes the Witch to melt away, allowing Dorothy to recover the shoe. The Winkies rejoice at being freed of the witch's tyranny, and they help to reassemble the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. The Winkies love the Tin Woodman, and they ask him to become their ruler, which he agrees to do after helping Dorothy return to Kansas.

Dorothy, after finding and learning how to use the Golden Cap, summons the Winged Monkeys to carry her and her companions back to the Emerald City. and the King of the Winged Monkeys tells how he and the other monkeys were bound by an enchantment to the cap by the sorceress Gayelette.

When Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz again, he tries to put them off. Toto accidentally tips over a screen in a corner of the throne room, revealing the Wizard to be an ordinary old man who had journeyed to Oz from Omaha long ago in a hot air balloon. The Wizard has been longing to return to his home and be in a circus again ever since.

The Wizard provides the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion with a head full of bran, pins, and needles ("a lot of bran-new brains"), a silk heart stuffed with sawdust, and a potion of "courage", respectively. Because of their faith in the Wizard's power, these otherwise useless items provide a focus for their desires. In order to help Dorothy and Toto get home, the Wizard realizes that he will have to take them home with him in a new balloon, which he and Dorothy fashion from green silk. Revealing himself to the people of the Emerald City one last time, the Wizard appoints the Scarecrow, by virtue of his brains, to rule in his stead. Dorothy chases Toto after he runs after a kitten in the crowd, and before she can make it back to the balloon, the ropes break, leaving the Wizard to rise and float away alone.

Dorothy turns to the Winged Monkeys to carry her and Toto home, but they cannot cross the desert surrounding Oz, subsequently wasting her second wish. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers advises that Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, may be able to send Dorothy and Toto home. They, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion journey to Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country. Together they escape the Fighting Trees, dodge the Hammer-Heads, and tread carefully through the china Country. The Cowardly Lion kills a giant spider, who is terrorizing the animals in a forest, and he agrees to return there to rule them after Dorothy returns to Kansas—the Hungry Tiger, the biggest of the tigers ruling in his stead as before. Dorothy uses her third wish to fly over the Hammer-Heads' mountain, almost losing Toto in the process.

At Glinda's palace, the travelers are greeted warmly, and it is revealed by Glinda that Dorothy had the power to go home all along. The Silver Shoes she wears can take her anywhere she wishes to go. She tearfully embraces her friends, all of whom will be returned, through Glinda's use of the Golden Cap, to their respective kingdoms: the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, the Tin Woodman to the Winkie Country, and the Cowardly Lion to the forest. Then she will give the Golden Cap to the king of the Winged Monkeys, so they will never be under its spell again. Having bid her friends farewell one final time, Dorothy knocks her heels together three times, and wishes to return home. When she opens her eyes, Dorothy and Toto have returned to Kansas to a joyful family reunion.

Illustration and design[link]

The book was illustrated by Baum's friend and collaborator W. W. Denslow, who also co-held the copyright. The design was lavish for the time, with illustrations on many pages, backgrounds in different colors, and several color plate illustrations.^{[citation needed]} In September 1900, The Grand Rapids Herald wrote that Denslow's illustrations are "quite as much of the story as in the writing". The editorial opined that had it not been for Denslow's pictures, the readers would be unable to picture precisely the figures of Dorothy, Toto, and the other characters.^[11]

A new edition of the book appeared in 1944, with illustrations by Evelyn Copelman. Although it was claimed that the new illustrations were based on Denslow's originals, they more closely resemble the characters as seen in the famous 1939 film version of Baum's book, starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr.^[12]

The distinctive look led to imitators at the time, most notably Eva Katherine Gibson's Zauberlinda, the Wise Witch, which mimicked both the typography and the illustration design of Oz.^[13] The typeface was the newly designed Monotype Old Style.^{[citation needed]} Denslow's illustrations were so well-known that merchants of many products obtained permission to use them to promote their wares. The forms of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard, and Dorothy were made into rubber and metal sculptures. Costume jewelry, mechanical toys, and soap were also designed using their figures.^[14]

Themes[link]

This section requires expansion.

Baum explores the theme of self-contradiction in The Wizard of Oz. He created characters who—like humans—have complex, contradictory natures.^[15] The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion all lack self-confidence. The Scarecrow believes that he has no brains, though he comes up with clever solutions to several problems that they encounter on their journey. The Tin Woodman believes that he lacks a heart, but is moved to tears when misfortune befalls the various creatures they meet. The Cowardly Lion believes that he has no courage even though he is consistently brave through their journey. Carl L. Bankston III of Salem Press noted that "These three characters embody the classical human virtues of intelligence, caring, and courage, but their self-doubts keep them from being reduced to mere symbols of these qualities."^[15]

By the end of novel, the characters attain self-fulfillment when they have met their objectives. To convince the characters they have the qualities they desire, the Wizard places an amalgamation of bran, pins, and needles in the Scarecrow's head to inspire intellect; gives a silk heart to the Tin Woodman to inspire love; and a drink to the Cowardly Lion to inspire bravery.^[15]

Sources of images and ideas[link]

Dorothy meets the Cowardly Lion, from the first edition.

Baum acknowledged the influence of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, which he was deliberately revising in his "American fairy tales" to include the wonder without the horrors.^[16]

Local legend has it that Oz, also known as The Emerald City, was inspired by a prominent castle-like building in the community of Castle Park near Holland, Michigan where Baum summered. The yellow brick road was derived from a road at that time paved by yellow bricks. These bricks were found in Peekskill, New York where Baum attended the Peekskill Military Academy. Baum scholars often reference the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (the "White City") as an inspiration for the Emerald City. Other legends allude that the inspiration came from the Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego, California. Baum was a frequent guest at the hotel, and had written several of the Oz books there.^[17] In a 1903 interview with Publishers Weekly,^[3] Baum said that the name "OZ" came from his file cabinet labeled "O-Z".^[18]

[edit] Alice in Wonderland

Another influence lay in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. A September 1900 review in the Grand Rapids Herald called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz a "veritable Alice in Wonderland brought up to the present day of standard of juvenile literature".^[11] Although Baum found their plots incoherent, he identified their source of popularity as Alice herself, a child with whom the child readers could identify; this influenced his choice of a protagonist.^[16] Baum was also influenced by Carroll's belief that children's books should have many pictures and be pleasurable reads. Carroll rejected the Victorian-era ideology that children's books should be saturated with morals, instead believing that children should be allowed to be children. Building on Carroll's style of numerous images accompanying the text, Baum amalgamated the conventional features of a fairy tale (witches and wizards) with the well-known things in his readers' lives (scarecrows and cornfields).^[19]

Personal life[link]

Many of the characters, props, and ideas in the novel were drawn from Baum's experiences. As a child, Baum frequently had nightmares of a scarecrow pursuing him across a field. Moments before the scarecrow's "ragged hay fingers" nearly gripped his neck, it would fall apart before his eyes. Decades later as an adult, Baum integrated his tormentor into the novel as the Scarecrow.^[20] According to his son Harry, the Tin Woodman was born from Baum's attraction to window displays. Because he wished to make something captivating for the window displays, he used an eclectic assortment of scraps to craft a striking figure. From a washboiler he made a body, from bolted stovepipes he made arms and legs, and from the bottom of a saucepan he made a face. Baum then placed a funnel hat on the figure, which ultimately became the Tin Woodman.^[21] John D. Rockefeller was the nemesis of Baum's father, an oil baron who declined to purchase Standard Oil shares in exchange for selling his own oil refinery. Baum scholar Evan I. Schwartz posited that Rockefeller inspired one of the Wizard of Oz's numerous faces. In one scene in the novel, the Wizard is seen as a "tyrannical, hairless head". When Rockefeller was 54 years old, the medical condition alopecia caused him to lose every strand of hair on his head, making people fearful of speaking to him.^[22]

In the early 1880s, when Baum's play Matches was being performed, a "flicker from a kerosene lantern sparked the rafters", causing the Baum opera house to be consumed by flames. Scholar Evan I. Schwartz posited that this may have inspired the Scarecrow's severest terror: "There is only one thing in the world I am afraid of. A lighted match."^[23]

In 1890, while Baum lived in Aberdeen which was experiencing a drought, he wrote a witty story in his "Our Landlady" column in Aberdeen's The Saturday Pioneer.^[24] The story was about a farmer who gave green goggles to his horses, causing them to believe that the wood chips they were eating were pieces of grass. Similarly, the Wizard made the people in the Emerald City wear green goggles so that they would believe their city was built from emeralds.^[25] Baum, a former salesman of china, wrote in chapter 20 about china that had sprung to life.^[25]

During Baum's short stay in Aberdeen, the dissemination of myths about the plentiful West continued. However, the West, instead of being a wonderland, turned into a wasteland because of a drought and a depression. In 1891, Baum moved his family from South Dakota to Chicago. At that time, Chicago was getting ready for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Scholar Laura Barrett stated that Chicago was "considerably more akin to Oz than to Kansas". After discovering that the myths about the West's incalculable riches were baseless, Baum created "an extension of the American frontier in Oz". In many respects, Baum's creation is similar to the actual frontier save for the fact that the West was still undeveloped at the time. The Munchkins Dorothy encounters at the beginning of the novel represent farmers, as do the Winkies she later meets.^[26]

Baum's wife frequently visited her niece, Dorothy Louise Gage. The infant became gravely sick and died on November 11, 1898, of "congestion of the brain" at exactly five months. When the baby, whom Maud adored as the daughter she never had, died, she was devastated and needed to consume medicine.^[27] To assuage her distress, Frank made his protagonist of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz a female named Dorothy.^[28] Uncle Henry was modeled after Henry Gage, his wife Maud's father. Bossed around by his wife Matilda, Henry rarely dissented with her. He flourished in business, though, and his neighbors looked up to him. Likewise, Uncle Henry was a "passive but hard-working man" who "looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke".^[29] The witches in the novel were influenced by witch-hunting research gathered by Baum's mother-in-law, Matilda. The stories of barbarous acts against accused witches scared Baum. Two key events in the novel involve wicked witches who both meet their death through metaphorical means.^[30]

The Gold Standard representation of the story[link]

Baum did not offer any conclusive proof that he intended his novel to be a political allegory. Historian Ranjit S. Dighe wrote that for sixty years after the book's publication, "virtually nobody" had such an interpretation until Henry Littlefield, a high school teacher.^[31] In his 1964 American Quarterly article, "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism",^[32] Littlefield posited that the book contained an allegory of the late 19th-century bimetallism debate regarding monetary policy.^[33] At the beginning of the novel, Dorothy is swept from her farm to Oz by a cyclone, which was frequently compared to the Free Silver movement in Baum's time.^[32] The Yellow Brick Road represents the gold standard and the Silver Shoes which enable Dorothy to travel more comfortably symbolizes the Populist Party's desire to construct a bimetallic standard of both gold and silver in place of the gold standard. She learns that to return home, she must reach the Emerald City, Oz's political center, to speak to the Wizard, representing the President of the United States.^[32] While journeying to the Emerald City, she encounters a scarecrow, who represents a farmer; a woodman made of tin, who represents a worker dehumanized by industrialization; and a cowardly lion, who represents William Jennings Bryan, a prominent leader of the silverite movement.^[34] The villains of the story, the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wicked Witch of the East, represent the wealthy railroad and oil barons of the American West and the financial and banking interests of the eastern U.S. respectively. Both these groups opposed Populist efforts to move the U.S. to a bimetallic monetary standard since this would have devalued the dollar and made investments less valuable. Workers and poor farmers supported the move away from the gold standard as this would have lessened their crushing debt burdens. The Populist party sought to build a coalition of southern and midwestern tenant farmers and northern industrial workers. These groups are represented in the book by the Good Witches of the North and South.^{[citation needed]} "Oz" is the abbreviated form of ounce, a standard measure of gold.

Littlefield's thesis achieved some popular interest and elaboration^[35] but is not taken seriously by literary historians.^[36][37]

Bradley A. Hansen, a professor of economics at the University of Mary Washington, disagreed that the novel is a monetary allegory. He argued that the numerous intersections between both the individuals and happenings in the novel and those in the 1896 presidential election are the central evidence upon which proponents of the allegory depend. Further stating that research has shown that neither Baum's works nor his life history indicate that he supported Populism, Hansen concluded that "the true lesson of The Wizard of Oz may be that economists have been too willing to accept as a truth an elegant story with little empirical support, much the way the characters in Oz accepted the Wizard's impressive tricks as real magic".^[34]

Cultural impact[link]

The Wizard of Oz has been an inspiration for many fantasy novels and films. It has been translated or adapted into well over fifty languages, at times being modified in local variations. For instance, in some abridged Indian editions, the Tin Woodman was replaced with a snake.^[38] In Russia, a translation by Alexander Melentyevich Volkov produced five books, The Wizard of the Emerald City series, which became progressively distanced from the Baum version, as Ellie and her dog Totoshka travel throughout the Magic Land.

However, its fame has greatly increased mainly because of the many network telecasts of the 1939 film version of the book.

In 1967, The Seekers recorded "Emerald City", with lyrics about a visit there, set to the melody of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".

In 1995, Gregory Maguire published Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, a revisionist look at the land and characters of Oz. Instead of depicting Dorothy, the novel focuses on Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West. The Independent characterized the novel as "an adult read reflecting on the nature of being an outcast, society's pressures to conform, and the effects of oppression and fascism".^[39] Universal Pictures, which bought the novel's rights, initially intended to make it into a film. Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz convinced the company to make the novel into a musical instead. Schwartz wrote Wicked's music and lyrics, and it premiered on Broadway in October 2003.^[39]

Many of these draw more directly on the 1939 MGM Technicolor film version of the novel, a now-classic of popular culture shown annually on American television from 1959 to 1991, and shown several times a year every year beginning in 1999.^[40]

Critical response[link]

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz received positive critical reviews upon release. In a September 1900 review, The New York Times praised the novel, writing that it would appeal to child readers and to younger children who could not read yet. The review also praised the illustrations for being a pleasant complement to the text.^[41]

In the first 50 years after The Wizard of Oz's publication in 1900, it received little critical analysis from scholars of children's literature. According to Ruth Berman of Science Fiction Studies, the lists of suggested reading published for juvenile readers never contained Baum's work. The lack of interest stemmed from the scholars' misgivings about fantasy, as well as to their belief that lengthy series had little literary merit.^[42]

It has repeatedly come under fire over the years. In 1957, the director of Detroit's libraries banned The Wizard of Oz for having "no value" for children of today, for supporting "negativism", and for bringing children's minds to a "cowardly level". Professor Russel B. Nye of Michigan State University countered that "if the message of the Oz books—love, kindness, and unselfishness make the world a better place—seems of no value today", then maybe the time is ripe for "reassess[ing] a good many other things besides the Detroit library's approved list of children's books".^[43]

In 1986, seven Fundamentalist Christians families in Tennessee opposed the novel's inclusion in the public school syllabus and filed a lawsuit.^[44][45] They based their opposition to the novel on its depicting benevolent witches and promoting the belief that integral human attributes were "individually developed rather than God given".^[45] One parent said, "I do not want my children seduced into godless supernaturalism".^[46] Other reasons included the novel's teaching that females are equal to males and that animals are personified and can speak. The judge ruled that when the novel was being discussed in class, the parents were allowed to have their children leave the classroom.^[44]

On a more secular note, feminist author Margery Hourihan has described the book as a "banal and mechanistic story which is written in flat, impoverished prose" and dismissed the central character from the movie adaptation of the book as "the girl-woman of Hollywood".^[47]

Providing a twenty-first century perspective about the novel, Leonard Everett Fisher of The Horn Book Magazine wrote in 2000 that Oz has "a timeless message from a less complex era, and it continues to resonate". The challenge of valuing oneself during impending adversity has not, Fisher noted, lessened during the prior 100 years.^[48]

In a 2002 review, Bill Delaney of Salem Press praised Baum for giving children the opportunity to discover magic in the mundane things in their everyday lives. He further commended Baum for teaching "millions of children to love reading during their crucial formative years".^[19]

Editions[link]

Baum's novel has been adapted and retold numerous times. In some cases, the adaptations bear only a slight semblance to the original edition.^[49] By its centennial, the novel had been translated into 22 languages such as Swahili, Tamil and Serbo-Croatian.^[5]

To celebrate the centennial of the book's publication, the University Press of Kansas published a new edition titled The Kansas Centennial Edition. Illustrated by Michael McCurdy, the black-and-white pictures spanned 24 full pages. Andrew Karp of Utopian Studies critiqued the illustrations as being "stunningly detailed" but "somber, sharp-edged, and stark". Whereas W.W. Denslow's illustrations in the first edition portrayed Dorothy and her friends as exuding warmth, McCurdy's depicted Dorothy as "plain, dumpy, even ugly" and her friends as frightened. Karp concluded that the centennial edition, because it is considerably dismal, more resembles the beginning of the 1939 MGM movie than Baum's first edition.^[50] Robert Sabuda created a pop-up book to commemorate the book's centennial. Baum scholar Michael Patrick Hearn called the book a "fond tribute" to W. W. Denslow and an "inventive interpretation" of Baum's novel. Sabuda used Denslow's first edition illustrations as "color linoleum cuts" and improved upon them by portraying the features that Denslow failed to capture.^[51]

The 2002 Sterling Publishing edition of the novel was illustrated by Michael Foreman with bright watercolors. Reviewer Heide Piehler of School Library Journal applauded Foreman for his "skillful command of color and light to emphasize the story's sense of adventure and enchantment". Piehler also admired the "subtle humorous details", including the winged monkeys' adorned with "Red Baron-style googles". In her generally favorable review, she critiqued Foreman's depiction of a normal Dorothy as a "disappointment".^[49]

Sequels[link]

Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz without any thought of a sequel. After reading the novel, thousands of children wrote letters to him, requesting that he craft another story about Oz. In 1904, he wrote and published the first sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz, explaining that he grudgingly wrote the sequel to address the popular demand.^[52] Baum also wrote sequels in 1907, 1908, and 1909. In his 1911 The Emerald City of Oz, he wrote that he could not continue writing sequels because Ozland had lost contact with the rest of the world. The children refused to accept this story, so Baum, in 1913 and every year thereafter until his death in May 1919, wrote an Oz book. The Chicago Tribune's Russell MacFall wrote that Baum explained the purpose of his novels in a note he penned to his sister, Mary Louise Brewster, in a copy of Mother Goose in Prose (1897), his first book. He wrote, "To please a child is a sweet and a lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward."^[8]

The exceptional success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz resulted in the creation of many sequels. Baum wrote thirteen sequels to the novel. After he died in 1919, Baum's publishers delegated the creation of more sequels to Ruth Plumly Thompson who wrote 21.^[19] An original Oz book was published every Christmas between 1913 and 1942.^[5] By 1956, five million copies of the Oz books had been published in the English language, while hundreds of thousands had been published in eight foreign languages.^[8]

Adaptations[link]

Judy Garland as Dorothy discovering that she and Toto are no longer in Kansas

The Wizard of Oz has been adapted to other media numerous times, most famously in the MGM's 1939 film starring Judy Garland. Prior to this version, the book had inspired a number of now-less-well-known stage and screen adaptations, including a profitable Broadway musical and three silent films. The 1939 film was considered innovative because of its songs, special effects, and revolutionary use of the new Technicolor.^[53]

The story has been translated into other languages (at least once without permission), and adapted into comics several times. Following the lapse of the original copyright, the characters have been adapted and reused in spin-offs, unofficial sequels, and reinterpretations, some of which have been controversial in their treatment of Baum's characters.

See also[link]

Oz portal

• 1900 in literature

Notes and references[link]

Notes

Footnotes

Bibliography

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• Baum, Frank Joslyn; MacFall, Russell P. (1961). To Please a Child. Chicago: Reilly & Lee Co.
• Berman, Ruth (11 2003). "The Wizardry of Oz". Science Fiction Studies (DePauw University) 30 (3): 504–509. Archived from the original on 2010-11-27. http://www.webcitation.org/5uXx2zUQ5. Retrieved 2010-11-27. 
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• Dighe, Ranjit S. (ed.) The Historian's Wizard of Oz: Reading L. Frank Baum's Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory (2002)
• Gardner, Martin; Nye, Russel B. (1994). The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press
• Gardner, Todd. "Responses to Littlefield" (2004), online
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• Greene, David L.; Martin, Dick (1977). The Oz Scrapbook. Random House.
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• Hansen, Bradley A. (2002). "The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics". Journal of Economic Education (Taylor & Francis) 33 (3): 254–264. DOI:10.1080/00220480209595190. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1183440. 
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External links[link]

Wikisource has the complete text of: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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More spoken articles

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at Project Gutenberg
• "Down the Yellow Brick Road of Overinterpretation," by John J. Miller in the Wall Street Journal
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Audio Book a Librivox project.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900 illustrated copy), Publisher's green and red illustrated cloth over boards; illustrated endpapers. Plate detached. Public Domain – Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, full text and audio.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, an unabridged dramatic audio performance at Wired for Books.
• The Baum Bugle: A Journal of Oz published by The International Wizard of Oz Club, provides frequent critical and historical information about L. Frank Baum and the Oz Series.
• Online version of the 1900 first edition on the Library of Congress website.