The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Essay - Critical Essays   Baum was
obviously indebted to the eccentric English genius Lewis Carroll
(pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), author of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass
(1871). In Victorian times it was generally believed that books
for children should lean heavily on moral instruction. The
authors of juvenile literature often intruded into their own
stories to point out the moral lessons the stories supposedly
illustrated. Carroll believed that children were given too much
moral indoctrination and were not allowed to be children. His
books about Alice parodied sententious, sanctimonious adults,
and he proclaimed that good books should be full of pictures and
should be fun to read.  Baum offered a further innovation by
combining the traditional elements of fairy tales, such as
witches and wizards, with familiar things such as scarecrows and
cornfields. He is credited with teaching children to find magic
in the ordinary things surrou