Sobre o livro
Após um ciclone atingir sua casa no Kansas, a pequena Dorothy e seu cachorro Toto são transportados para uma terra mágica e desconhecida. Este conto de fadas moderno narra a jornada da menina em busca de um caminho de volta para casa, enquanto ela encontra figuras peculiares e descobre os mistérios de um lugar governado por bruxas e um poderoso mago.
O começo do livro
Introduction
Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages,
for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal.
The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.
Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library;
for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie,
dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible
and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale.
Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.
Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today.
It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained
and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.
L. Frank Baum Chicago, April, 1900.
Chapter I The Cyclone
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry,
who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.
Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.
There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room;
and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds.
Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner.