L. Frank Baum took inspiration for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from fairy tales, but Baum's story is quite different than the dark tales popularized by the brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. While death is integral to TWWOO's plot, the only characters who are killed are unequivocally villains. Also, whereas many fairy tales see their characters grow from children to adults, sometimes by sexual or other sinful means, Dorothy remains a child from beginning to end, and a rather innocent one at that.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is often compared to two other famous children's books from around the same time period: Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and J.M....
