From Maine to Japan

I've been re-reading some of my Oz books. When I was a little girl, our library had all 14 of the books about Oz written by L. Frank Baum, and the little cards in the back of them (our library books had little cards in the back of them! I miss those) had my name over and over and over again, from the painstakingly scrawled "Jennifer" to the whimsical, bubbly (and short-lived) "Jenni" to the terse and businesslike long-term-winner "Jen."

I. Loved. Those. Books.

I loved the idea that ordinary girls--Dorothy and after her Trot and Betsy Bobbin--could find themselves whisked suddenly away to another world. I adored the gender-bending Ozma. In retrospect, I believe I was very taken with a world in which all of the major powers for good and evil were women. Men tended to be either humbugs like the Wizard (who could only do magic he learned from Glinda) or ridiculous (like the threatening but ultimately comical Nome King). Women were magical, forces to be reckoned with. As an adult I can see the pitfalls of this, but as a child I loved all the women of Oz, from the selfish Princess Langwidere, who changes heads every day rather than hairstyles, to Red Reera the Yookoohoo, the isolationist witch.

I owned a copy of the first book. On the cover, it showed Dorothy and her companions coming to a place in the Yellow Brick Road where the road halted and gave way to a wide river. The party was getting ready to board a raft and try to cross to the unknown wilderness on the other side. On the cover, under the title, was a word that I found mystical and magical:

Unabridged.

In my young mind, I was convinced that "unabridged" referred to that cover illustration and the difficulty of crossing that river. The river was unabridged, and if they could get beyond it who knew what wonders and perils awaited them? I loved that word. It seemed to breathe potentials and possibilities.

I wanted to live an unabridged life.