She just puts one foot in front of another along the Yellow Brick Road to achieve what it is that she needs to do.” And most of what she achieves she achieves without recourse to the magic. “Dorothy really set the stage for little girls getting out of the house and going on adventures the way that boys do.” Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, adds: “Dorothy goes into a land in which magic spells are part of the apparatus of governance. “There is a real American value of being self-reliant, and you see that with Dorothy,” says Dina Massachi in American Oz, a new American Experience documentary airing on PBS on April 19. Baum’s book offered otherworldly adventures firmly rooted in the American landscape: In this case, Kansas, with a plucky, self-reliant girl who doesn’t need a prince to save her, a sunny appreciation of hucksterism, and good witches. The most popular fantasy stories for children came from Europe, such as the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault. They sought to impart moral and religious values. Before the end of the nineteenth century, books written for children were instructional and sermonizing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |