The Road to Oz: Twists, Turns, Bumps, and Triumphs in the Life of L. Frank Baum (review)

Krull manages to pack quite a bit of information about the creator of Oz into this picture-book biography of L. Frank Baum. Starting with his privileged childhood, she details his hobbies as a young boy, the range of business ventures that all ended in failure, the energetic approach he took to marriage and fatherhood, and the eventual writing and unprecedented success of the Oz books. Sprinkled through with wry parenthetical asides, Krull’s text is witty and reader-friendly, and it provides a narrative yellow brick road that makes the writing of the Oz books seem inevitable, a natural outgrowth of all of the experiences Baum had along the way. Hawkes’ lush acrylics feature, appropriately, a heavy emphasis on green, and they become almost a treasure hunt as he slyly suggests the possible real-life sources for the scarecrow, the tin man, the Emerald City, horses with green glasses, burning brooms, etc. Spot and endpaper art, monochromatic (usually green) line illustrations, echoes Denslow’s original illustrations for the Oz books, while the various poses of Baum himself in the full-page illustrations never fail to capture his genial, optimistic outlook. A note, source list, and Oz bibliography are included.