Author: Jane Albright

Looking for last-minute gift ideas?  Anyone still asking what you’d like this holiday season?  Oz makes gift shopping easy for my family; but I can seldom wait when it’s a book I’ve looked forward to. My reading pile is already tall, and chock full of gift ideas for Oz fans.  While many of these titles will be reviewed and explored in The Baum Bugle, I thought I’d also share recent titles that have found their way to me here on the President’s Corner blog.  A Star is Born; Judy Garland and the Film that Got Away is written by her daughter Lorna Luft with Jeffrey Vance. (2018, Running Press)  I have great expectations; Lorna wrote it!  A must have for Judy fans; I don’t expect a lot of Oz in these pages, but will read every word anyway. The Road to Oz, the Evolution, Creation, and Legacy of a Motion Picture Masterpiece is where there most certainly will be lots of Oz. Jay Scarfone and Bill Stillman have added this title to their growing list of significant Oz research books. Google around and you’ll find online interviews and numerous media stories. The authors say they’ve filled it with many never-before-published details, including some that contradict long-held beliefs about the beloved film. Intriguing!  (2018, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group) Adapting The Wizard of Oz; Musical Versions from Baum to MGM and Beyond by Danielle Birkett and Dominic McHough (2018, Oxford Press) looks a bit more like academic than a “popular” read. Not many images, but loads of notes at the end of each chapter.  If you’d really like to learn something about Oz musical history, and I do, I’m guessing this book will take us there. The Wonderful Animated World of the Wizard of Oz will be a much faster read with black and white images on every one of its 54 pages. Kevin Scott Collier authored for Cartoon Research. I counted 18 different productions covered, although the last chapter, “CGI Oz Productions 2007-present” actually bundles several productions together.  (2018, CreateSpace) Rhys Thomas book from 1989 has been updated!  The Ruby Slippers of Oz; Thirty Years Later serves up 330 pages of focus on the most magical footwear ever.  The original book was as much mystery genre as any other;  Thomas traced the origins and current whereabouts of all the Ruby Slippers known to have actually been used in MGM’s production. I look forward to catching up with the journeys they’ve had these last three decades. Find it available at Lulu.com. (Sorry it’s not in photo pile, but this one’s wrapped and under the tree.) Twenty years in the making, Dee Michel’s Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love The Wizard of Oz, is one of those books I’m especially proud to have. Dee began his research long ago, and I have had the opportunity to hear him speak at Oz Club gatherings since our 2000 convention in Bloomington, Indiana. I appreciate his many references in his book to our Club and the encouragement he’s received from us. More than that, of course, gay and straight readers curious about his topic will enjoy learning about his discoveries. (2018, Dark Ink Press) The Road to Wicked is topping my pile simply because it’s a bit smaller than other titles. It’s subtitled “The Marketing & Consumption of Oz from L. Frank Baum to Broadway.” I have great expectations. Three co-authors are credited, Kent Drummond, Susan Aronstein, and Terri L. Rittenburg, in this book that was described to me as sort of a text-book about the Oz brand.  The authors are marketing and English professors, so I am inclined to be believe that may be as concise a description as any. I can honestly say it’s the first Oz reference book I’ve thumbed through where I spotted pie charts!  (2018, Palgrave MacMillan) I wrote a review of The Magic Belt by Paul Miles Schneider for the winter issue of the Baum Bugle, because I read it the minute I got it. Like his previous two Oz novels, I feel like a kid from Baum’s day demanding to know “what next?” when it comes to the adventures of Donald Gardner and his friends. Paul’s book is self-published, and easily found online at Paul’s website or through Amazon.  Without spoilers, I’ll just explain that Paul’s main character had an encounter with Oz magic in this world that turned his world upside down. Written in an action/adventure style, Paul has made Oz as real as Baum ever did, allowing powers of good and evil to erupt, and create for Donald situations ripe for a young hero to prove himself. The Wizard of Oz; Where Is He Now? Is the other fiction title waiting for me. Written by Richard Mickelson, it’s illustrated in color by Patty Fleckenstein. Tate Publishing brings us this book, which was an early Christmas gift to me from an Oz friend. The story follows the adventures of an extra-small Munchkin girl who was stowed away in the Wizard’s basket when it left the Emerald City behind at the end of The Wizard of Oz. I won’t be able to tell you more until I read it! Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist is a fascinating biography of L. Frank Baum’s remarkable mother-in-law. She truly was a radical suffragist, an outspoken feminist, an abolitionist, and a brilliant writer who proposed ideas in the late 1800s that still challenge us today. Author Angelica Carpenter is a personal friend (and past Oz Club president) who sent me an early copy. I could not put it down. (2018, South Dakota Historical Society Press) The Munchkins of Oz; Legends, Myths and Realities by Stephen Hoover appears to have been self-published in 2013. I stumbled across it looking for something else entirely, and went ahead and ordered a copy anyway.  Looks to be a quick read at 128 pages.  Nearly all the sources credited are websites, which does not make me confident I’ll find anything particularly new. However if there’s a Munchkin-loving gift recipient on your list, it might please. I’m quite late to the party with Oz, the Marvel Omnibus.  The 2014 publication was released with a $125 list price that gave me pause. With used copies now on the market and the occasional comic shop offering its remaining copies at discounted rates, I was pleased to add it to my collection at last. This book gathers the six Skottie Young/Eric Shanower Marvel books into a single volume along with the Marvel Wizard of Oz Sketchbook and the Oz Primer. It’s also about the size and heft of three bricks; you are getting a lot for your money! Speaking of weight, last year Bibliographia Baumiana was likely weighing down a few stockings. It remains available at Shop.OzClub.org. (If you’re a Club member, be sure to select the hard- or soft-cover volume with member pricing.)  This comprehensive guide to collecting L. Frank Baum’s non-Oz writings hits 400 pages and still keeps going.  Introductory essays by W. Neal Thompson (we all know him as Bill) are really fascinating to read and the bibliographic details provided are precisely what Baum collectors need to help gauge the edition, and therefore relative value, of any Baum book in their collection. That can’t be all. I know Yookoohoos of Oz by Paul Dana with illustrations by Vincent Myrand was published this year. Both are friends who do fine work.  Oz fiction readers also might consider The Lost Tales of Oz, a collection of 18 new short stories in the Baum tradition. I’ve recently picked up some fascinating foreign language editions. Simply recommending would be an endless list this year. But my intent with this blog was to work my way through the pile currently sitting on the Oz room coffee table. And ta-da!!!  I’ve now done it. Please, if you have additional titles in your own reading pile, tell us about them in the comments section. And most of all, enjoy your holiday reading!

Our holiday mailing arriving in members’ homes now.  Please see everything included and act on those that need your attention. The holiday card was created by Mark Manley. You’ll find more of his artwork in both The Baum Bugle and The Oz Gazette. Nick Campbell, editor of The Oz Gazette, has written an original short story to accompany the card. Enjoy! There’s a letter from me recapping some of the highlights of our 2018 membership year, as well as a membership renewal form and return envelope to our Michigan mailing address.  I hope you’ll join us for 2019!  (With zero permission from our Baum Bugle editor to leak anything, I’ll just vaguely suggest that Ruby Slipper fans won’t want to miss the Spring 2019 issue….)  We didn’t include a gift membership form, so if you’d like to give the gift of membership, either copy your form or use the website, Shop.OzClub.org, to join. Completely my mistake as I was the one who oversaw printing and distribution this year. Your ballot for to vote for directors also is included with its own return envelope to the home of our Vice President, Ryan Bunch. Ryan chairs our nominating committee and is responsible for counting votes and reading any comments on those ballots that might come his way. Last and certainly not least, the mailing includes fliers for Oz, The National Convention outside New Orleans in June, and for OzCon International, which will be held in Pomona, California, again this summer. This holiday mailing and the Autumn Baum Bugle are arriving pretty closely together. We are working get the Bugle back on track; I anticipate Winter will mail in January ’19, with the 2019 membership issues mailing on schedule. We will likely include another renewal form in the Winter issue since many members don’t renew until they have it in hand, and we’ll follow that ahead of the spring issue with an email to 2018 members who have not yet joined for 2019.

A small Oz Passport appeared on the market some years back. It’s intended as a little pocket notebook, selling for $3-$6 depending on where you find it. But a pocket notebook isn’t quite enough for Oz fans. We go Oz places. We see Oz productions. We have Oz adventures. Those passports should get filled up with Oz destinations and events. Today the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas, All Things Oz in Chittenango, NY, and the Land of Oz Museum in Wausaukee, Wisconsin, all have rubber stamps to stamp visitor passports.  We had one at the Club’s 2017 convention, and at OzCon International this past summer. Help us grow the effort! Contact organizers of Oz events in your area and encourage them to offer a unique rubber stamp or sticker to mark Oz Passports. Carry yours when you go to an Oz event and ask if they can stamp it for you. If not, tape in your ticket stubs or appeal to a VIP guest for their signature; think outside the box to ensure your Oz passport captures your memories. Looking back on Oz trips you’ve taken, how fun would it be to have recorded them all in a passport?  We can’t turn back time, but there are ample adventures ahead. With a bit of team effort, we Ozians can make this a fun activity for passport carriers.  

The Oz Club’s calendar for 2019 celebrates our publication of Bibliographia Baumiana in two ways.  Images and textual points from Baum non-Oz books used in the calendar come from the new collector’s guide. And each month a different collector shares the story behind how they came to have that month’s featured book. Oz and Baum book collecting emerged early the Oz Club’s history as a common interest of most Club members.  The Baum Bugle frequently provided bibliographic details of different books that establish publishing priority; details that clarified first and other editions. Because Baum’s publishers rarely indicated printing history on copyright pages, these details could only be found through extensive comparison of any given book. Dick Martin, David L. Greene, James E. Haff are credited with much of the earliest bibliographic work, which Douglas G. Greene and Peter E. Hanff expanded upon to publish Bibliographia Oziana in 1976. As more information was found, a revised edition was published in 1988. Thirty years later, Bibliographia Baumiana is now available, too. This book (details here) establishes the publishing history of all L. Frank Baum’s non-Oz books. W. Neal “Bill” Thompson is responsible for making this happen, building on earlier research by Peter Hanff and the late Patrick Maund. But back to the topic at hand; our 2019 calendar. Each year we pick a different theme for the calendar and this year Bib Baum was the hands-down favorite. I solicited a dozen collectors about the copies of these books in their collections, and asked them to share their stories.  We have Peter Hanff finding a Denslow-inscribed Father Goose: His Book decades ago, and Bob Baum loaning his inscribed copy of Mother Goose in Prose to the set of DREAMER OF OZ.  Bill Campbell found his first edition Sky Island in its dust jacket at an antique show.  Anne Corner’s John Dough and the Cherub has been passed through her family for generations. (Anne lives in Austria now, but her husband is from Wamego, Kansas, home of the Oz Museum!) Gifts, bargain buys, and the sense of triumphant discovery mark each story, making it an inspiring read. As in past years, the dates in the calendar include all the trivia I could find tied to the theme. (By they way, sorry about that text block slip in June!) The Oz Club calendar is not available for sale. It is our gift, with great thanks, to those who join the Club at membership rates of $100 or more. Thank you, again, to those supporters, as well as to those who contributed their stories, helped with proofreading, or otherwise contributed to the completion of the calendar.  Top of that list? Bill Thompson, who’s incredible work on Bibliographia Baumiana will serve as an invaluable resource to Baum collectors as far into the future as any of us can see.

Kansas City Ballet premiered a lavish new ballet of The Wizard of Oz. Since KC is my hometown, I was there for opening night, but also for a number of local events designed to promote the production. There was a kick off at Union Station, a talk at the library, a rehearsal, and a book club discussion leading up to opening night. Every event was memorable. It was hard to focus on remarks by Artistic Director Devon Carney and Mayor Sly James at the kick-off event at Union Station, because the area was teaming with Poppy Girls and Emerald Citizens. The costumes were lovely, and the promise of great things to come.  The company gave us a taste of the choreography and our first chance to hear some of the original score written for this ballet. Afterwards they shared the dance floor with the public during a flash mob to Ease on Down the Road. Great fun! Photo ops included posing with a pair of Ruby Slipper ballet shoes. Posters were handed out to the crowd. Choreographer Septime Webre joined Carney at the Public Library for a packed audience. Costumed mannequins allowed us to get up close to the Tin Man, the Wicked Witch of the West, Munchkins and Yellow Brick “Roadie” costumes. This time the stories held my attention. Webre grew up with the Oz books and first produced the story as a child with hand-costumed marionettes.  His desire to bring a fresh new version of the story to the stage has been with him for decades; only now did he feel really prepared to create his vision of Oz.  He shares some of that story online here. I was invited to a rehearsal (the perks of being president of the Oz Club!) and took my friend Paul Schneider with me. It was a working rehearsal, so we held our desire to burst out in exclamations and applause. It wasn’t easy.  The company was rehearsing the Muchkinland scene, giving me an idea of how Dorothy, the two Witches, and an absolutely scene stealing Toto would appear on stage. We met many of the dancers at a reception afterwards, including Amanda DeVenuta who dances the role of Dorothy. Just days before opening night the KC Public Library’s Book Club met to discuss Baum’s original novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We compared the book to the classic film, and when Devon Carney joined us with his laptop to show us costume and set designs, our collective enthusiasm grew. There was an article in the paper about our discussion you can read if you’re interested. (Link) And finally it was opening night. But that was so incredible a night it calls for a blog all its own….