Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
The Tin Woodman was inspired by a window display that L. Frank Baum made for a hardware store in real life. ( Source)
When Baum was a little boy, he imagined the scarecrows on his family farm were always about to come to life. Those memories were his source of inspiration for the Scarecrow. (Source)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz wasn't the first book that L. Frank Baum wrote. That would be a nonfiction title about fancy chickens, a subject on which he was an expert. (Source)
It's no coincidence that the most powerful people in Oz are women. L. Frank Baum was a feminist. His views were likely influenced by his mother-in-law, who worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (Source)
School teachers in California used The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to teach their classes about how trials work in the United States. Dorothy Gale was tried for murder and judged by her "peers" in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. (Source)