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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 . The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 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 . There was no garret at all , and no cellar — except a small hole dug in the ground , called a cyclone cellar , where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose , mighty enough to crush any building in its path . It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor , from which a ladder led down into the small , dark hole . When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around , she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side . Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions . The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass , with little cracks running through it . Even the grass was not green , for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere . Once the house had been painted , but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away , and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else .
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