Worldwide Conspiracies in Oz

Because The Wizard of Oz occupies such a big place in Americans' collective imagination, it's only natural for our conspiracy theorists to decide that it means even more. And of course the World Wide Web is a wonderful forum for people to express their theories about, well, worldwide webs.

I recently sampled some of the online conspiracist essays about Oz, and see some broad patterns:

• Many of these theories trace The Wizard of Oz's role in their personal favorite conspiracy back to author L. Frank Baum, given his lively, if not detailed or consistent, opinions on religion and social movements.
• However, none of the conspiratorial connections those theorists see were detected in Baum's lifetime or shortly afterwards. All these interpretations date from well after the MGM movie was televised annually.
• Many theorists have a hard time differentiating between the book and the movie, crediting Baum with details that didn't appear until 1939 or seeing books and movie as all part of the same conspiracy.
• Racism and bigotry of other sorts is never far below the surface of these theories.
• Most enjoyably, conspiracy theorists have a wonderful way of splintering into smaller and smaller groups, each accusing others of being part of the conspiracy.

Here's one such essay, "L. Frank Baum and the Not-So-Wonderful Wizard of Oz," apparently a joint production of Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D., and Steve Van Nattan. The main text is said to come from Cuddy's book, the Biblical interpolations from Van Nattan.

Cuddy is an anti-New World Order crusader. His biography reassures us that he "has been a Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education [and]...testified before members of Congress on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice." (No dates attached to those experiences.) Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) inserted various Cuddy writings into the Congressional Record during debate on an education bill in 1998.

Van Nattan is a Christian pastor who's written such things as, "Nor will I approve of the pulpit being used by those who are mere do-gooders or political hucksters, such as the Gideons. I know how to hand out Bibles without the help of Episcopalians." (Those aggressive Episcopalians.) The "Not-So-Wonderful" essay also appears on Van Nattan's old website, with every appearance of the phrase "New World Order" replaced with "piano casters." The ways of the world are mysterious, but an explanation may lie in the fact that Van Nattan has a piano supplies business. And, apparently, a hacked-up website.

Van Nattan has apparently angered another conspiracy theorist, Edward Hendrie, on the question of interracial marriage. Meanwhile, Hendrie and Cuddy and a lot of others are in agreement that the U.S. government knew about the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York in advance--but it's quite possible each has different explanations and therefore opposes the other.

But where in the Oz legend, you must be asking, are the Illuminati? According to "Wizard of Oz and Illuminati Mind Control", they were involved, too. That essay seems to come from Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler's book The Illuminati Formula to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave, and Deeper Insights. (Insights even deeper than undetectable mind control?) That book reveals, among so much more, that "At the Kennedy Space Center...Mind control testing is done, and base programming such as the Wizard of Oz programming is done here." Well, some people do think Oz is on another planet.

Springmeier presents himself as a minister, and Wheeler states that she is from "an Illuminati family." This webpage links them to other identities. In March 2001, the Portland Oregonian reported that Springmeier had been arrested on drug charges and found with "white supremacist literature." He replied by starting the charges were--what else?--a conspiracy. But in late 2003 Springmeier was sentenced to nine years in prison for helping to rob a bank in 1997.

Ken Vardon, maintainer of the webpage reprinting Springmeier and Wheeler's Wizard of Oz essay, has his own opponents among the conspiracy crowd who regard him with suspicion because of his military background.

Also reprinting material from Springmeier and Wheeler is this page from the "New Covenant Church of God" in Sweden, whose website tells us:

The theme inside the MGM is the Wizard of Oz which is for Monarch programming. (To understand the Wizard of Oz mind control programming the reader needs to get this author’s various writings on the Monarch Programming, which includes an Illustrated Guide To Monarch Programming and other writings.) Bob Hope, an MI-6 agent who was used extensively in W.W. II to trigger mind-controlled military men with the proper hypnotically embedded trigger words, received his own mind-controlled sex slaves after the war. . . .

Secret agents, word-triggered hypnosis, sex slaves--that definitely sounds like a Bob Hope movie from the early 1960s. Somewhere between Bachelor in Paradise and I'll Take Sweden. Pity it exists only in some fevered imaginations.

Bats at the Beach takes off

Daniel Pinkwater and Scott Simon maintained their role as the Oprah Winfrey of picture books this weekend, producing top sales with one rave review broadcast to millions.

The Saturday-morning pair focused their sonar on Brian Lies's Bats at the Beach. Before the day was out, the book was #3 at Amazon. All of us Lies fans here in New England are thrilled for him.

You can hear the radio segment here. Here's Brian's website.

Bats at the Beach also gives the lie to a "rule" of writing picture books that a lot of newcomers think they've heard: "Don't write in rhyme." BatB is in verse, as are many other successful picture books, new and old. Verse requires both rhyme and rhythm. Rhyme seems easy, but rhythm is hard.

So I think newcomers should interpret "Don't write in rhyme" as:

• Don't write in rhyme just because you think all picture books have to be written that way.
• Don't write in rhyme unless you can manage the rhythm as well.
• Don't expect writing in rhyme to make up for a weak story, flat characters, wordiness, cliches, or other problems.

Brian's text actually shifts from iambic to anapestic rhythm for some couplets, which might trip up readers until they realize the pattern. Stick with it!

Septina Nash and the Order of the Penguins

Septina Nash is lamenting her publisher's concern that the working title of the upcoming chronicle about her, Septina Nash and the Penguins of Doom, sounds too much like certain thick books by J. K. Rowling.

As someone who's been in a scores of title meetings, I have to go with the publisher on this one. Sounding like a certain series could obscure the book's originality. And with only one volume left, said series is going to be yesterday's news the day after tomorrow. (I write metaphorically, of course.)

I'd say to young Miss Nash, "Honey, you know no one knows your first name yet. Every September you have to teach your school administrator how to spell it and your teacher how to pronounce it. How will potential fans find your book in digital databases if they're not sure how the first word of the title is spelled?

"Yes, I know Harry Potter gets his name in his titles. But his name is ludicrously easy to spell. It's Anglo-Saxon and salt-of-the-earth (not like those aristocratic French and Latin names that attach themselves to villains, such as Voldemort and Draco--but that's another story).

"So what's better for a Septina Nash adventure than a title starting Septina Nash...? Well, look at what happened when your penguin friends waddled onto your MySpace page: 1,200 friends! Yes, I know they were just coming off a hit movie. But we're talking about your chance for break-out here. People like penguins. People know how to spell 'penguin.' So think about something like..."

Penguins of Doom: The Lost-and-Found Letters of Septina Nash

Did Penguins Steal My Sister?: A Septina Nash Mystery

Penguin Peril: Septina Nash's Epistolary Adventures, Volume 4 (starting with volume 1 is so old-fashioned, so...Pottery)

Of course, the book's publisher might then decide that Penguins of Doom sounds too much like a certain adventure by M. T. Anderson.

authorless events at Wild Rumpus

The American Booksellers Association website carries an article about "authorless author events" at Wild Rumpus, a children's bookstore in Minneapolis.

What gets children more excited than authors? Well, potato chips, for one thing. Sometimes just one potato chip. Or a scrap of a potato chip that hasn't been lying on the floor too long.

But if you're a bookstore, potato chips would get the covers all greasy. Instead, Wild Rumpus offers...doll mutilation!

"Mummify Your Barbie" is one of Wild Rumpus' most popular events. An archaeologist discusses and demonstrates the mummification process, and attendees each practice on their own Barbie. "The highlight is cutting off her hair. Every little girl wants to cut the hair off her Barbie," said Morgan. "The appeal of the workshop is not only curiosity about the whole mummification process. There's something deeply satisfying about mutilating a Barbie."

It's true. Forbes says so.

Wild Rumpus provides the Barbie dolls, which it buys in bulk, and does not charge for the event.

Well, that's no fun--mummifying a Barbie that doesn't belong to anyone! Isn't the real appeal of Valley of the Kings Barbie playing with your sister's doll?

To find an archaeologist, she recommended approaching the archaeology department of a local university. "People are usually pretty excited to [visit the bookstore] because it's a chance to connect with a totally different population than they see every day. . . . And if someone tells you no, don't take it personally. What the hell, just find another archaeologist."

They're always hanging around, after all. Unlike authors.

non-fantasy book warning

Since I expect more children's librarians will see this page than will find their way to my other blog, Boston 1775, I'm adding this link to a series of messages I posted there on inaccuracies in A Travel Guide to Colonial Boston (Lucent Books, 2004). Now I feel better.

looking for Leapholes

According to legend, Joseph Kennedy got out of the stock market just before the Crash of 1929 because he heard his chauffeur and other menials talking about stocks and decided that the market had peaked. He figured that these investors were too uninformed to value properties accurately, and there was no one left to buy stocks at an even higher price.

My proposed sign that the recent bull market in children's fantasy has peaked: The American Bar Association is publishing a fantasy novel for young readers. It's called Leapholes, and it's the first children's book by thriller writer James Grippando. "Harry Potter meets John Grisham," the book's editor told Publishers Weekly. "It's time travel with a legal twist."

The premise that PW describes seems to come out of one of Evil Editor's query specimens:

With the aid of a lawyer with magical powers, Leapholes's hero, young Ryan Coolidge, literally zips in and out of law books, meeting historical characters who figured in some of the most famous legal cases in American history.

"Oh, no, a magistrate has issued a bench warrant for John Peter Zenger! Thank goodness I've retained a lawyer with magical powers!"

According to the BookSpan press release, young Ryan is "a boy who hates middle school and who is in the worst kind of trouble--trouble with the law." He must wish that he merely had, say, medical trouble. Ryan's mentor is "a mysterious old, African-American lawyer named Hezekiah"--another "magic Negro" part for Morgan Freeman.

The volume ends with essays by prominent lawyers--Baldacci, Scottoline, Boies & Alia--describing how they came to the profession. (BookSpan calls this an "Afterward." Sic.) Let's not tell those high-powered attorneys that kids rarely read prologues, forewords, introductions, afterwords, or other extras. If we did tell, we might get into the worst kind of trouble.

visions of fantasy editors

At the chock-full-of-stuff Cynsations, author Cynthia Leitich Smith has posted an interview with Mirrorstone editor Stacy Whitman. I met Stacy online while she was in graduate school at Simmons, and you can see the informed perspective she brings to her job:

Children's literature is the only genre written by people who aren't its target audience. A lot of "gatekeeper" adults filter the literature before it reaches a child's hands--booksellers, teachers, librarians, parents, editors, writers. So our challenge is to help those gatekeepers love our books as much as we love them, to create stories that kids will love even after being recommended by an adult.

I suspect that feeling of being outside the gates is especially strong at Wizards of the Coast, Mirrorstone's parent, since it specializes in paperback fantasies, which make a lot of critics turn up their noses. As Stacy says, "I've heard from many readers that...they expected a series paperback to be pretty bad. We want to tell good stories that kids will enjoy, and to do that, the writing must be excellent as well as the story."

Last month HarperCollins editor Michael Stearns offered Fly by Night, Blog by Day, a room-by-room description of escorting British author Frances Hardinge on her American tour to promote Fly by Night. One moment to remember--

Question from darling schoolchild: If you were born in England, why are you touring schools here?

Answer: (Good question, Frances looked at her editor, who was unable to explain much of anything, and then she explained that the book had just been published here.)

getting and sorting, we lay waste our powers

Ever since a certain hat whispered, "Gryffindor," more and more fantasy stories seem to include a scene in which the young protagonist is formally sorted into one group or another. I'm surprised at how this ritual apparently appeals to so many young readers.

The Ranger's Apprentice series, by Australian John Flanagan, starts with a "Choosing Day." As Penguin's web catalogue copy helpfully explains, "at Choosing Day, the day all wards of the castle are told what career path they'll follow into adulthood." (This moment was featured in Unshelved, Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum's online comic strip by, about, but not just for librarians.)

Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series includes a "claiming ceremony," when the Greek gods claim children as their own. As Publishers Weekly reported, the great Bookpeople bookstore of Austin, Texas, used this as the basis of a short summer camp for young readers. The legend of Zeus claiming Ganymede as his cupbearer offers some precedent, but not one I thought would carry a lot of weight these days.

Another, non-literary example appears in the Disney movie Sky High, in which the "power placement" ceremony separates teens into superheroes and sidekicks.

Such sorting and choosing is part of a childhood, of course, whether it's picking sides for kickball or finding a seat at lunch or starting the college-application process in eighth grade. But when did formal sorting ceremonies become something kids in our society looked forward to?

It's often said that European education systems have deeper tracks than ours, so it may be no surprise that Britain, home of the O-Levels, produced the OWLs in Harry Potter. But J. K. Rowling's fantasy world sorts deeper than that. Harry and his schoolmates are wizards from birth. As for the rest of us--well, if you haven't been called to Hogwarts by age eleven, you're a mere muggle. Have a fun life.

Are kids now so used to being tested, categorized, and labeled that they don't wish for an alternative system, simply for a better label? Riordan's website offers "Ten Signs You May Be a Half-Blood," such as being diagnosed with ADHD or dyslexia; his fantasy thus offers one label for another. And the wizard/muggle division seeps into real life in the "indigo child" phenomenon.

In most classic fantasy with one foot in the realistic world, the heroes are ordinary kids, much like the readers. They become extraordinary through luck (often bad to start with) and pluck. Anybody can stumble across a magic ring. Anybody can be a dragon-hatcher. Anybody can find the grail. That's the fantasy part!

How Martha Speaks speaks to kids

Last month I had the honor of introducing author-illustrator Susan Meddaugh to an audience of the Foundation for Children's Books. A fine lady, and a model for doing much creative work after employment at a publisher.

Susan's character Martha, as her many fans know, is a dog who eats alphabet soup and develops the ability to talk. That's page 5 of the 32 (unnumbered) pages in Martha Speaks, so I'm not giving anything away.

This picture book combines two types of text to tell its story. There's the genre's usual narrative styling: serif type (Century Schoolbook, it looks like) with big leading, no paragraph indents, standard punctuation, lines above and below the artwork, describing action and dialogue in third person ("Martha raced to the kitchen. She barked. She growled.").

And then there are handwritten word balloons, as in cartoons. Their letters expand and contract, their lines bend and bulge. These words even turn red with anger. Most of those word balloons point to Martha, so figuratively her dialogue--her ability to speak--disrupts the staid text.

What Martha says is also disruptive. She talks like a little kid--just a bit younger than readers themselves, I guess. She's got a fine vocabulary, but no sense of propriety. So Martha asks for food, wonders why a man is fat, asks for food, tattles, gives away secrets, asks for food, speaks during TV shows, and wonders when that food is coming along.

Reading Martha Speaks, kids get to feel like grown-ups, seeing what Martha's doing wrong and feeling proud that they're above that. The book's main child character, Helen, is grouped with her parents in the conflict rather than with Martha.

Of course, those young readers (and we older ones) also get to live vicariously through Martha, saying whatever's on our tiny minds.

Southbridge library displays Oz collection

This weekend I stayed at the home of fellow Oz fan and cataloguer Dee Michel while I attended a historical conference. I had no idea until I got home, however, that last week Dee's display of his Oz collection kicked up a tiny cyclone in another Massachusetts town, Southbridge.

Dee's display is called "Wizard of Oz: A Cultural Touchstone." He first assembled his collection this way for the University of Massachusetts library last year. With 2006 being the 150th anniversary of L. Frank Baum's birth, the Jacob Edwards Library in Southbridge is hosting the exhibit.

This exhibit is also connected with Gay Pride Month since Dee's working on a book about the appeal of the Oz series for gay men. On 21 June, the library hosts him and Gregory Maguire, author of latter-day Oz novels Wicked and Son of a Witch and a gay father of I've-lost-track-of-how-many. They'll speak and mingle with guests at a fundraising reception for the library.

All that seems to have been too much for one town council member, who used meeting time to suggest boycotting the library. The Jacob Edwards Library gets no money from the town for its displays and speaker programs, and even if it did Massachusetts leads the nation in ending anti-gay legal discrimination. So the town councilman seems to be using public resources to promote his personal viewpoint on a private matter.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette broke the story. (Thanks to Blair Frodelius's new Daily Ozmapolitan roundup of Ozzy news for this link.) The American Library Association also picked it up.