Most-Read Stories Behind the Stories:
No. 4, Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?

This sum­mer, I’m re-post­ing the 10 Most-Read Sto­ries Behind the Sto­ries from this blog. I’ve rewrit­ten each essay some­what and includ­ed the most-often-asked ques­tion about the book. 

As we con­tin­ue our count­down, this book is #4 on the most-read list, my 11th book.

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Many peo­ple are fas­ci­nat­ed by maps. I knew a seri­ous book col­lec­tor who built a large library of books which were select­ed because they had maps in them. For exam­ple, Trea­sure Island, famous­ly, has a map in it. Indeed, it’s said that Steven­son drew the map for his step-son first, and then wrote the book.

I too like maps, and so, back in the day when I work­ing as a librar­i­an, I was intrigued when a new atlas came into the ref­er­ence col­lec­tion. To my great delight it was an atlas of fan­ta­sy lands. A won­der­ful­ly clever idea, it was fun to see maps of, not just Trea­sure Island, but the lands of Oz, the Thou­sand-acre Woods, and so on.

As I was going through the book I real­ized an impor­tant map was miss­ing: the chess­board from Through the Look­ing Glass, by Lewis Car­roll. That was the begin­ning of my think­ing of the book which became Who Stole the Wiz­ard of Oz?

My notion was to write a mys­tery in which the essen­tial clues were to be found in the maps of well-known chil­dren’s books—books which had been stolen from the Check­er­town, Ohio Library. When I first wrote the book it was to be a sequel to my first nov­el, No More Mag­ic. It did­n’t quite work, so I revised it heav­i­ly, and it became this book.

When an inno­cent Becky has been accused of steal­ing The Wiz­ard of Oz, she and her twin broth­er Toby need to track down the real thief, and find a hid­den trea­sure, using sto­ry maps as essen­tial clues. (Hint: a checker­board and a chess­board are iden­ti­cal) And, if it brought my read­ers to The Wind in the Wil­lows, Win­nie-the-Pooh, the Oz books, Trea­sure Island, and Through the Look­ing Glass, so much the better.

In short, Who Stole the Wiz­ard of Oz? is a book about books brought into my head by yet anoth­er book. That’s what hap­pens when the writer is also a librarian.

Curi­ous fact: There is a moment in the sto­ry when Becky and Toby are in the library and become fright­ened when some­one sud­den­ly appears. As writ­ten, Toby stands behind Becky. This was the moment the pub­lish­er chose for a cov­er illus­tra­tion, but they put a much old­er look­ing Toby in front of Becky. When I com­plained, sub­se­quent edi­tions shift­ed the char­ac­ters’ positions.

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Most often asked question:

“Were you think­ing of a real library when you wrote this book?”

Yes: the Floyd Memo­r­i­al Library, in Green­port, NY.