A Kansas farm girl and her dog are swept up by a cyclone and set down in a country of talking scarecrows, tin woodmen, and witches both good and wicked — where the only road home runs on yellow brick toward a wizard who turns out to be a humbug behind a curtain. Baum set out to write a fairy tale with the nightmares left out, and produced instead the first great American one: no ancient European castles, just a brainless straw man, a heartless woodcutter, and a cowardly lion who each already carry the very thing they are sure they lack. It gave the century its yellow brick road and its lasting image of the little man frantically working the levers of a machine far bigger than himself.