American Fairy Tales

This is the first time, I believe, that a book has been printed containing Fairy Tales that relate mainly to American boys and girls and their adventures with real fairies in the United States and other American countries. If fairies exist at all---and no one has yet been able to prove that they do not exist---then there is no good reason why they should not inhabit our favored land as well as the forest glades and flowery dales of the older world across the water. For fairies are not peculiar to any one locality, and every race has its own fairy legends. Yet, we must consider that the beautiful and well-known tales of Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, as well as those of Hauff, Perault [sic], Caballero and Andrew Lang, date many long years ago, and such histories would never do for American Fairy Tales, because our country has no great age to boast of. So I am obliged to offer our wide-awake youngsters modern tales about modern fairies, and while my humble efforts must not be compared with the classic stories of my masters, they at least bear the stamp of our own times and depict the progressive fairies of to-day. My friends, the children, will find these stories quite as astonishing as if they had been written hundreds of years ago, for ours is the age of astonishing things. They are not too serious in purpose, but aim to amuse and entertain, yet I trust the more thoughtful of my readers will find a wholesome lesson hidden between each extravagant notion and humorous incident. --- L. Frank Baum