“Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to
its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover
America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.” – L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum won lasting success and several spots
in the lexicon with his imagination, especially in creating The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. And while that is the story for which he is
mainly remembered, he wrote nearly 60 novels, 83 short stories, 200 poems and
countless scripts, produced on stage and in the fledgling movie industry in the
early 1900s.
Baum was a newspaper
editor for several years, working at the Saturday
Evening Pioneer, in Aberdeen, S.D.
He said it was his newspaper work led to his writing in the creative and
fantasy genres, although I’m not really sure why.
L. Frank Baum
And, it was his 1880s
experiences on the prairies of drought-stricken South Dakota (my own home state,
by the way) that led to his setting for the beginning of Dorothy’s journey to
Oz, although as everyone knows, he changed the location to Kansas.
And thus, along with
the names Dorothy and Toto and his idea that a land could be found Over The
Rainbow, his phrase “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” became one of the most
recognizable in our language. It’s probably
for the best, since it has a much better ring to it than “We’re not in South
Dakota anymore.”
Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend by clicking the g+1 button below.
No comments:
Post a Comment