Land of Oz Lives Anew Through Wizardry of Author’s Descendant

Tell Roger Baum that he laughs like the Cowardly Lion, and he’ll take it as a compliment. And well he should--you could say the two of them are distant relatives.

Indeed, Roger Baum, 51, is the great-grandson of L. Frank Baum, the author who dreamed up the Lion, the Land of Oz, its wonderful Wizard, Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Glinda the Good Witch of the South, the Wicked Witches of the West and East, Dorothy Gale of Kansas.

And Toto, too.

“Well, thank you very much, that’s quite an honor!” Baum will say when told of the Lionesque laugh (more correctly, the Bert Lahr-Lionesque laugh). And then he’ll laugh some more.

Each day, this jolly gentleman dresses in a dark business suit and goes, unassumingly, to his job as business checking program manager at Great Western Bank. And each night, he goes to Oz--via the study in his Westlake Village home, where he sits with his notebook and spins tales direct from the Emerald City, Munchkin River, Yellow Brick Road and environs.

His “Dorothy of Oz” (William Morrow and Co., $14.95) is the first Oz book to be written by a Baum since his great-grandfather’s “Glinda of Oz” in 1919.

“About 3 1/2 years ago my friend John Miller, a fine lithographer and a real Oz fan, said, ‘Why don’t you write an Oz book?’ ” the redheaded, diminutive author recalled.

“Well, I thought it was very presumptuous for me to even consider writing one, being the great-grandson. But I decided to give it a try. And one chapter just led to another; the story seemed to develop. And it was almost--and I’ve said this before--where it seemed like great-grandfather was looking over my shoulder. And I really mean that. I’d write through soft spots, and things would come to me. It just all of a sudden seemed to come together, and here we have the book!”

And children all over the world have a new Oz adventure to read, in which Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, goes to Kansas to tell Dorothy that her three friends (Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion) are in trouble, prompting Dorothy to don the silver slippers (they’re only ruby in the movie, folks), grab Toto, and click her heels to Oz. The slippers, however, are losing their power--she can only use them for one more round-trip over the rainbow--but the brave Dorothy goes anyway and matches wits with the evil Jester (an original Roger Baum character, late of the court of Gayelette and Quelala), who is using the wand of the late Wicked Witch of the West to turn Oz residents into . . . China dolls!

“Of course, one of the prizes would have been to get Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, as part of the Jester’s collection,” said Baum, sitting comfortably in his study, which is decorated with Oz memorabilia. “Dorothy is noted not for magic--she has none--but just her understanding, love of people, her heart. Glinda thought she was the one who was really needed to save the day.”

If Baum talks like a man who has actually seen these things happen, well, in a sense, he has. As he put it: “You generally put yourself into the book. You’re the character. The trick is moving from character to character, and maintaining the action. . . . Yes, you feel like you have truly visited Oz.”

To be sure, Baum’s book has all the inventive style of his great-grandfather’s 14 Oz books (all of which rest in the Baum study). Among other things fantastic, it sends Dorothy and friends sailing down the Munchkin River on a talking boat named Tugg. And just why, pray tell, does the boat talk?

“Well, the Talk Trees, on the shore of the Munchkin River, have not seen the rest of Oz,” Baum said. “Of course when they were asked to help contribute to a boat, they thought about it and talked about it, and got very excited. No one tree gave its all--but a tree here and there gave a limb or two. And of course, with Talk Trees, what would you have? You have a talking boat.”

Of course. And of course, with a Baum, what would you have but an author? Yet it was not always so. Prior to “Dorothy of Oz,” former Navy “swabbie” Baum had confined his writing to prose for occasions like weddings and eulogies--and to one children’s book written many years ago, “Long Ears and Tailspin’s Adventures in Candyland,” the story of a flying dog and his bird friend. He and other Baum descendants always maintained a low profile about their famous heritage, and his writing aspirations mostly took a back seat to raising his two children. Until, that is, the suggestion by his friend Miller and the encouragement (and typing) of his wife, Charlene. It wasn’t easy, however. That “presumptuous” feeling still nagged. How did he get over it?

“Anybody in the privacy of their home can write, and at that stage, that’s all it was, just a beginning of a book and an idea. It wasn’t presumptuous until it was taken seriously,” Baum said.

Not surprisingly, the Baum name helped allow the book to be taken seriously--but it was hardly enough to merit publication. Baum sent his manuscript to Peter Glassman, president of Books of Wonder publications (and owner of a New York children’s bookstore of the same name). While Glassman allowed that his interest was piqued by “the idea that an actual member of the Baum family wanted to continue L. Frank Baum’s work,” he stressed that “we would not publish a book that’s no good simply because it has a recognizable name on it--contrary to some other publishing house, perhaps, in the adult range. You can’t fool kids.”

What impressed Glassman was “how well Roger had captured the very Oz-y imagination of his great-grandfather--that wonderful, slightly nonsensical, very magical sense of wonder that would produce concepts like taking branches from talking trees to build a boat, and then having the boat talk!”

Glassman sent the manuscript to William Morrow & Co., where the reaction was similar, and two years later “Dorothy of Oz” hit the stores. Soon to enter its second printing, the book has garnered almost entirely laudatory reviews. Baum appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, and, more humbly, was a recent guest speaker at the Thousand Oaks Library, where children reportedly delight in talking to one of the very inventors of their favorite fantasylands.

Jody Fickes, owner of the Adventure for Kids bookstore in Ventura and a former children’s librarian, met Baum at the library appearance. “The book,” she said, “is quite good--it would be hard to say that it wasn’t written by the great-grandfather.” Sales of the lavishly illustrated (by Elizabeth Miles of “The Velveteen Rabbit” fame) story have been brisk at her store, she added, noting that “kids’ eyes light up when they see a new Oz book.”

No one is more pleased about all this than one-time reluctant writer Baum--whose very reluctance might also be considered a family trait. After all, his great-grandfather was hesitant to write follow-up Oz tales. A prolific author who wrote a total of 60 (mostly children’s) books under many pseudonyms, L. Frank Baum agreed to write only one sequel, “The Marvelous Land of Oz,” published in 1904. It took the clamoring of children to prompt him to continue the series.

Said Baum, who speaks knowledgeably and affectionately of his great-grandfather: “He always wanted to write a great adult novel. . . . He said finally he’d write another Oz book if 1,000 children wrote him 1,000 letters. And by God, he got over 1,000! It was the children’s vote that mattered.”

Baum never met L. Frank, who died in 1919. He did, however, meet L. Frank’s widow, Maud Gage Baum--although “meet” is stretching a point. The year was 1939, and Baum was about 9 months old. Still, the woman was thoughtful enough to autograph a copy of the first edition of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” to her great-grandchild. It reads: “Roger Stanton Baum, this book was written by your great-grandfather.” The book is now Roger Baum’s most treasured memento--and Baum has, poetically speaking, returned the courtesy. “Dorothy of Oz” is dedicated to L. Frank, with the words, “The guardian of the gates for all who are young at heart.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Baum does not consider himself the lone guardian of the gates of Oz.

“There are certain copyrights on the later books, but on the other hand a lot of copyrights have run out, and that’s opened up possibilities for people to write their own Oz stories,” he said. “Of course, we always hope it’s in the right tradition. Nobody has a claim to Oz. It’s for everybody. If others want to pick up the pen and write about Oz, who am I to say that they shouldn’t?”

In fact, Ruth Plumley Thompson wrote 19 critically favored Oz books well after L. Frank died. The 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz,” needless to say, be is a classic and beloved piece of modern American culture (Baum, who reveres the 1939 movie version, was born the same year), and Disney’s “Return to Oz” several years ago (which Baum also thinks very highly of) was turned into a novel (that, sadly, does not even acknowledge the influence of L. Frank Baum).

The stories have become, as Baum said, “maybe America’s greatest fairy tale . . . permeating our American society.

“Hardly a week goes by that you don’t hear somebody saying, ‘Look at the little Munchkin,” or some reference to the Yellow Brick Road. There’s an ad on television with the Tin Woodman getting up in the morning with stiff joints.

“People say, ‘There’s no place like home,’ and of course, that’s where that phrase originated. It’s just part of Americana.”

While no one might have a claim on Oz, only one Oz author has a claim on the name Baum. And no, the great-grandson is not waiting for those 1,000 letters from 1,000 children before writing his next Oz adventure. In fact, he’s already working on two more tales of that merry old land.

“I have a new one coming out the fall of this year,” Baum said, proudly. “It’s called ‘Rewolf of Oz,’ on Green Tiger Press, and it’s not like ‘Dorothy of Oz,’ in that it’s a picture book, really--only about 1,000 words of text.

“And this month, I think I’ve just got the story fully in mind for the next full-length Oz novel, which I hope to have finished by 1991.

“It’s something that has never been done before in Oz! Dorothy will be in it. And there will be cameo appearances by the Cowardly Lion and so forth. Of course, things have changed, but all of Dorothy’s friends will be there.”

Toto, too?

“Toto, too,” said Roger Baum.