Exploring The Lands Beyond Oz

Here's the original illustration from the book

Original I was just playing having fun sketching some none serious Oz sketches but Dorothy turned out so cute I had to finish up the drawing

Here's my first sketch

Something that I feel is partly lost in modern interpretations of L. Frank Baum’s works is how his fictional countries and kingdoms were meant to be a part of the real world, but cut off, instead of in a parallel world like it is now suggested.

Baum set out to write “American” fairy tales, and drew on older traditions from Europe. Countries like Oz, Ix, and Noland are very reminiscent of how older fairy tales would have lands said to be “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” or in the “thrice-nine land in the thrice-nine kingdom.” In stories such as those, travel to the fairyland is done by magical means, such as riding on the back of the wind. 

(The North Wind by Kay Nielsen.) 

In fact, the idea of traveling on the wind to a magical realm is repeated in how Dorothy travels by cyclone to Oz on her first adventure.

(Art by W.W. Denslow.)

Something that I feel is partly lost in modern interpretations of L. Frank Baum’s works is how his fictional countries and kingdoms were meant to be a part of the real world, but cut off, instead of in a parallel world like it is now suggested.

Baum set out to write “American” fairy tales, and drew on older traditions from Europe. Countries like Oz, Ix, and Noland are very reminiscent of how older fairy tales would have lands said to be “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” or in the “thrice-nine land in the thrice-nine kingdom.” In stories such as those, travel to the fairyland is done by magical means, such as riding on the back of the wind. 

(The North Wind by Kay Nielsen.) 

In fact, the idea of traveling on the wind to a magical realm is repeated in how Dorothy travels by cyclone to Oz on her first adventure.

(Art by W.W. Denslow.)

Something that I feel is partly lost in modern interpretations of L. Frank Baum’s works is how his fictional countries and kingdoms were meant to be a part of the real world, but cut off, instead of in a parallel world like it is now suggested.

Baum set out to write “American” fairy tales, and drew on older traditions from Europe. Countries like Oz, Ix, and Noland are very reminiscent of how older fairy tales would have lands said to be “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” or in the “thrice-nine land in the thrice-nine kingdom.” In stories such as those, travel to the fairyland is done by magical means, such as riding on the back of the wind. 

(The North Wind by Kay Nielsen.) 

In fact, the idea of traveling on the wind to a magical realm is repeated in how Dorothy travels by cyclone to Oz on her first adventure.

(Art by W.W. Denslow.)

maybe you gave up a few years of your life. you have callouses and muscles and a few scars and maybe a missing eye or something. you definitely have some blood on your hands. you might have PTSD you can’t talk to anyone about. and suddenly you’re fifteen again, in a body that’s too soft and too short and too complete. you’re always cold because there’s no magic burning in your veins anymore, and even as you grow up the feeling of not fitting doesn’t go away because when you look in the mirror at eighteen you look all wrong: this is not what you’re supposed to look like at eighteen. the sky clouds and you rub at the phantom ache of injuries this body never received. you wake up screaming sometimes remembering the sorcerer who burnt your hand to ashes, or the final battle you almost didn’t make it through, or the moment you felt the magic in you go out.

but here’s the thing: they took you and made you into a weapon that was determined enough and powerful enough to save a whole world. they can put you back where they found you but they can’t undo everything. and there’s this, too: the place between worlds clings to you. you can’t tease fire out of the air but you can feel the pull of the doorways all the time, although none of them so far go to your world.

but you try to make it work for a decade, anyway. you’re dutiful. but one night you leave work late and for the thousandth time you catch yourself searching the sky for firebirds. and you break. of the three portals within five hundred miles, one is a howling, frozen wasteland and one is a deep violet void, but one opens into a misty forest that you step into and don’t look back. it’s not your world, but if you keep going long enough, you’ll get there.

Dorothy when Ozma makes her an official princess of Oz (and Ozma’s chosen companion)

Dorothy when Ozma is speaking

Dorothy when Ozma does literally anything