The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) is one of America's great literary treasures. From his first published book for children, Mother Goose in Prose (1897), until his last, Glinda of Oz (1920), he produced a rich array of fairy tales, fantasy, and whimsy for the reading pleasure of millions of Americans, young and old alike. In all, he produced fourteen full-length Oz books. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, however, remains the most popular and enduring of all. One of the best-known and most-read books in the world, it is still considered "the quintessential American fairy tale."

Michael McCurdy's richly evocative scratchboard drawings and wood engravings grace more than 160 books for children and adults alike. These books have been acclaimed by the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Parenting, among others. They include American Fairy Tales, American Tall Tales, Tarzan, The Bone Man, The Sailor's Alphabet, Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass in His Own Words, Iron Horses, and Trapped by the Ice: Shackleton's Amazing Antarctic Adventure. Two of the volumes he illustrated—Howard Norman's The Owl Scatterer and Ann Whitford Paul's The Seasons Sewn—were chosen by the New York Times for the list of Ten Best Illustrated Children's Books of the Year.

Ray Bradbury, one of America's most popular and widely respected authors, has played a major role in putting fantasy and science fiction on the map of genres worthy of our close attention. His own books—classics like The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes—have sold millions of copies in English and in translation around the world.