BAUM, L(YMAN) FRANK

born May 15, 1856, Chittenango, N.Y., U.S. died May 6, 1919, Hollywood, Calif. American writer known for his series of books for children about the imaginary land of Oz. Baum began his career as a journalist, initially in Aberdeen, S.D., then in Chicago. His first book, Father Goose (1899), was a commercial success, and he followed it the next year with the even more popular Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A modern fairy tale, it tells the story of Dorothy, a Kansas farm girl who is blown by a cyclone to the land of Oz, where she is befriended by such memorable characters as a Tin Woodman, a Scarecrow, and a Cowardly Lion. In 1901 it was produced as a musical spectacle in Chicago. Its film version, in 1939, became a cinema classic and was made familiar to later generations of children through frequent showings on television. Baum wrote 13 more Oz books, and the series was continued by another after his death. Using a variety of pen names as well as his own, Baum wrote some 60 books, the bulk of them juveniles, popular in their day.