"Even . . . Baum could never have imagined the impact The Wonderful Wizard of Oz would have," wrote Amanda Spake in a centenary appreciation of the author in U.S. News and World Report. "One hundred years after its publication, [Oz] remains the most significant children's book in American history: No other fantasy is more beloved, hated, cited, imitated, interpreted, adapted, or marketed." Spake went on to point out that before the book went into the public domain in 1956, it had sold more than five million copies, and the movie version has been seen by an estimated billion people worldwide. Baum's book "change[d] the face of children's literature," according to Spake. The Wizard of Oz elevated children's literature above the realm of morality tales. As the Baum scholar Michael Patrick Hearn wrote in his 1973 book The Annotated Wizard of Oz, "It's adventure from a child's point of view. Dorothy goes out and solves her problems on her own. . . . She's not some little girl who sits around waiting for her prince to come." For that reason, Dorothy has been hailed by some critics as the first feminist heroine in children's literature.
What is often forgotten is that Frank Baum was a prolific author who created far more than The Wizard of Oz; he wrote more than the dozen sequels to his signature book.
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