The New Fairy Tales - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Copyright © 2010 of James Pettis, III

(I referenced the Son of a Witch cover for Liir and Elphaba. No Copyright Infringement Intended)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the sixth story in The New Fairy Tales Series. It is based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum in 1900 and loosely based on Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire in 1995 and 2005. I loved The Wizard of Oz (1939) when I was younger and have always wanted to do my own version of the Wizard of Oz. I was originally going to do David Poral and the Wizard of Oz which had a very solid plot, but I decided to put it with the fairy tale series. I have enjoyed working own my version of it and I hope that others will think it's interesting.

Dorothy Gale is a Nineteen year old Kansas City girl who lives with her Aunt Emma and Uncle Henry on their farm. Dorothy has an American Eskimo dog named Toto that quite often accidentally ruins a local gardener's garden, Ms. Gulch. One day, Ms. Gulch tries to beat Toto with a broom but he bits her. She then takes it to the county and they give her the authority to take Toto to City Hall to be put to sleep. But Toto escapes Ms. Gulch's Car and Dorothy runs away with him. But when Dorothy finds out about a storm coming, she thinks her Aunt Emma will worry about her and get herself hurt looking for her in the storm. Dorothy returns to the farm only to be whisked away by a cyclone the rips the farm right out of the ground. Dorothy then finds herself in the Land of Oz and surrounded by little people. She then meets Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked Witch (who's sister Dorothy unintentionally kills). Elphaba's sister's sapphire slippers are then given to Dorothy to help her along her journey to meet the Wizard of Oz; whom will grant her wish and send her back home to Kansas. On her journey, she meets a man with no name (whom she calls Exavior, due to a tag attached to clothes), Cleo (a humanoid robot), a cowardly lion named Theodore, and a handsome young man named Liir (Elphaba's son, who has a hidden agenda). They're all off to see the Wizard in this modern retelling of the 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum.

The Wizard of Oz has always been one of my favorite fairy tales. I have enjoyed coming up with ideas for it and love to work on it. I have taken characters from novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, like Elphaba (the Wicked Witch), Liir (Elphaba's son, a Warlock), Nessarose (the Witch of the East), and Fiyero (Elphaba's old love interest). My version of the Wizard of Oz has several different twists that I think people will really like. I also wanted to change the color of the slippers. I loved the original silver slippers, and the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz (1939); but I changed them to sapphire slippers instead. Stay tuned for more info and short stories from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.