Off to Australia

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, provided the Sydney Morning Herald with a list of “Books that changed me.” The first on the list:

The Wizard of Oz series - L. Frank Baum

This is my origin story. I grew up with well-worn copies of these books - books that had been handed down through my family for several generations, complete with the stunning art deco illustrations. The Oz stories were tales of a farm girl (which I was) who went on otherworldly adventures (which I wanted to do) and who was incredibly brave (which I still want to be). I always credit these books with making me into a traveller and a writer. If you have an especially dreamy little girl in your house, forget about Disney videos - get her a box set of these babies.

Dorothy herself visits Australia in the series’s second book, Ozma of Oz. Of course, first she gets castaway at sea, bests the Wheelers and the Nome King, befriends Ozma, and visits Oz for the second time.

Two years ago, Gilbert similarly praised the series in the New York Times Book Review.

(Hat tip to Blair Frodelius’s Daily Ozmapolitan.)

Odysseus, Siddhartha, Dorothy

The latest New York Times Book Review has an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, about her reading. Among the questions:

What were your favorite books as a child? Did you have a favorite character or hero?

The complete “Wizard of Oz” series, by L. Frank Baum. Over the course of those 14 books, stalwart Dorothy Gale triumphs, step by step, through precisely what Joseph Campbell would later call “the hero’s journey.” I think Dorothy may be the only little Midwestern girl you could ever put in the same archetypal category as Odysseus or Siddhartha. She was absolutely totemic for me.

Dorothy doesn’t appear in The Marvelous Land of Oz, and plays a supporting role in some other books, but she truly is an archetype. As well as a regular little girl.