The Wizard of the Emerald City 1". The Wizard of the Emerald City The Wizard of the Emerald City () is a 1939 children's novel by Russian writer Alexander Melentyevich Volkov. The book is a re-narration of L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Baum's name is sometimes credited in the book (in the appendix by Volkov, which is found in some editions, where Volkov describes the origins of his book). The names of most characters are changed, some elements of Baum's novel are removed, and some new elements are added. The book was illustrated by Leonid Vladimirski in 1959 and became quite popular in
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz be Australia, or perhaps a magical land in the center of the great Australian desert. Another influence lay in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". A September 1900 review in the "Grand Rapids Herald" called "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" a "veritable "Alice in Wonderland" brought up to the present day standard of juvenile literature". Baum found Carroll's plots incoherent, but he identified the books' source of popularity as Alice herself, a child with whom the child readers could identify; this influenced his choice of a protagonist. Baum was also influenced by Carroll's belief that children's books should have many