Volume 21, Number 6 · April 18, 1974

The Fate of the Munchkins

By Alison Lurie
The Annotated Wizard of Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by W.W. Denslow, with an introduction, notes, and bibliography by Michael Patrick Hearn

Clarkson N. Potter, 384 pp., $15.00

For more than half a century after L. Frank Baum discovered it in 1900, the Land of Oz had a curious reputation. American children by the thousands went there happily every year, but authorities in the field of juvenile literature, like suspicious and conservative travel agents, refused to recommend it or even to handle tickets. Librarians would not buy the Oz books, schoolteachers would not let you write reports on them, and the best-known history of children's books made no reference to their existence.



Review, 1463 words

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