<h2><SPAN name="chap00"></SPAN>Introduction</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p class="letter">
L. Frank Baum<br/>
Chicago, April, 1900.</p>
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