Description
L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen Oz novels and many short stories, but Oz was only a part of what he wrote. Animal Fairy Tales is an excellent example of his fertile imagination at work. This anthology of short stories by Oz creator L. Frank, with illustrations by Dick Martin, is the first collected edition of Animal Fairy Tales. Baum believed, if humans can have fairies in their lives, why can’t the animals? Here you will find stories about tigers, alligators, gophers, chimpanzees, buffalo, dogs, giraffes, wombats, and porcupines. Each sought help from their own types of fairies, who aided their charges, granted wishes, and gave them moral lessons about what it is like to be an animal in this world.
Originally written in 1905 and published over nine months in the magazine The Delineator, the original 1969 publication of this volume marked the first collected edition of these stories. Oz and Baum scholar Russell P. MacFall provides an illuminating introduction, putting these stories into the context of Baum’s career, and compares them to other stories about animals. For this 1989 reprint edition, the text was corrected and reset.
Hardcover edition, 1989. Numerous b&w illustrations throughout. 160 pages.
Contents include Baum’s prologue and nine stories:
- The Story of Jaglon
- The Stuffed Alligator
- The Discontented Gopher
- The Forest Oracle
- The Enchanted Buffalo
- The Pea-Green Poodle
- The Jolly Giraffe of Jomb
- The Troubles of Pop Wombat
- The Transformation of Bayal the Porcupine
Animal Fairy Tales belongs on the shelf of every Oz lover, or, really, any fan of classic children’s literature.
