L. Frank Baum Biography

Fast Facts

• Became the best-selling children's book author in America with the publication of "The Wizard of Oz" in 1900
• Was the secretary of Aberdeen's Women's Suffrage Club
• Attended Peekskill Military Academy from the age of 12 to the age of 14
• His early jobs included raising chickens, writing plays, running a theater company and starting a business that produced oil-based lubricants
• After starting a family, but before focusing on writing, he ran a bazaar, started a baseball club, reported for a frontier newspaper and bought dishware for a department store
• Quote: "You see, in this country there are a number of youths who do not like to work, and the college is an excellent place for them․"
• A children's author, he is best known for writing "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and its 13 sequels
• Credited with founding a new genre of children's literature that broke from the authorial discourse and overt focus on morality that characterized European children's literature at the time
• After finishing his first novel, "The Wizard of Oz," he framed the stub of the pencil he had written it with
• After seeing his granddaughter for the first time, he declared that Ozma was a more fitting name for her than her given name of Frances, and her name was changed