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L. Frank Baum, the man who wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” famously did it with one pencil, in one great blast.

But the Wizard of Oz didn’t come out of nowhere. Baum was 44. By 1899, he’d worked and failed as a chicken farmer, an actor, an oil-can merchant, a traveling salesman.

He’d ventured west to the Dakotas. Seen wonders. Feared Sitting Bull. Suffered a fierce mother-in-law. Searched for his own True Self.

And then, wrote the great American fairy tale. Of Kansas and Dorothy, Toto and a wizard. He was the JK Rowling of his day. This hour, On Point: Finding Oz.

You can join the conversation. What is it about this story — the book, the movie, Dorothy, Toto, “There’s no place like home” — that gets us going? Can you feel the currents that must have inspired L. Frank Baum? Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Evan Schwartz is a former editor at BusinessWeek and author of “Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story.”  His previous book is “The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television.”

You can watch Evan Schwartz introduce “Finding Oz” and read an excerpt from the book at his website.

More links:

Find an illustrated reprint edition of Baum’s original “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900) using Google Book Search.

The full text of the original edition is online at Project Gutenberg.

And here are some famous scenes from the 1939 movie (from YouTube):

Megan Follows in Kevin Sullivan's miniseries "Anne of Green Gables"

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When “Anne of Green Gables” was published, a century ago this year, not everyone loved it. The New York Times called Lucy Maud Montgomery’s tale of a chatty redheaded girl on Prince Edward Island “altogether too queer.”

They’ve eaten their words. A hundred years later, the feisty young Anne is still going strong: in the original and the books that followed, in movies and television, prequels and sequels, and hordes of Green Gables tourists from all over the world.

This hour: the last Victorian, proto-feminist classic, “Anne of Green Gables,” at one hundred.

Did you read the book as a kid? Did you read it last week? What keeps Anne going after all these years? Is it the sweet pastoral scenes of days of yore, or the feisty redhead Anne Shirley who won’t be kept down? Has Anne mattered in your life? In generations of your family? Join the conversation.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Guelph, Canada, is Mary Henley Rubio, professor emerita at the University of Guelph and author of the biography, “Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings,” about the author of “Anne of Green Gables,” which will be published this fall. She co-edited Montgomery’s journals between 1985 and 2004 and co-edited the Norton Critical Edition of “Anne of Green Gables” in 2006.

Joining us from Toronto, Canada, is Kevin Sullivan. He’s the director and producer of the 1985 film version of “Anne of Green Gables” and its two sequels. The prequel, “Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning,” is coming soon.

More links:

The official site of Prince Edward Island has information about the Anne of Green Gables 100th anniversary — as well as a virtual tour of the famed Green Gables house.

Front cover detail from "Children's Literature" by Seth Lerer

Bedtime stories are booming. Even in our hi-tech, hi-speed times, children’s books are the most profitable segment of the publishing world.

And perhaps it’s no surprise: Across cultures and centuries, we?ve always had literature for kids. From Aesop’s Fables to medieval “primers” to tales of Robin Hood and Robinson Crusoe, Mother Goose and Harry Potter.

These stories have taught children how to read, how to behave, how to deal with an uncertain world that goes bump in the night.

This hour, On Point: A new history of children’s literature, and what it tells us about growing up.

- Guest host, Jane Clayson

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Guests:

Seth Lerer, professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University and author of “Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter.”

Links:

The Washington Post reviews Seth Lerer’s book