"The Wizard of Oz" and and books like it were the vanguard of a new type of children's book (and as such, a lesson book for a new generation). In those books, good was good, and evil was evil (but might be converted, so that they needn't face the consequences). The good could make mistakes and or do things wrong, but were never punished, and everything always works out in the end. If you think that was always the formulae for children's books, I suggest that you go back and read a little Hans Christian Andersen–the original "Little Mermaid" might be enlightening.

What I find incredibly interesting about all of this, is that this switch from "story as preparation for real life" to "story as pure pleasure" was not accidental. Read below Framk Baum's original introduction to "The Wizard of Oz".

INTRODUCTION
Folk lore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old-time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incident devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wondertales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this through in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.

L. Frank Baum
Chicago, April, 1900.

How deliciously ironic. No need to introduce morals into stories–schools will take care of that, we can just pitch carefree entertainment. Talk about faith in unproven technology!

Of course, when Baum wrote that, I doubt that he forsaw the possibility that learning morals would not only stop being part of "modern education," it would be actively discouraged. Thus leaving us, as the religious right is fond of stating, as a society with no moral center.

I do hope that you are not a part of the so-called "religious right", because if you are, you won't be thrilled with the truth about the stories that you are so happy to tout.

Most of these, particularly Grimm and Anderson, but also Mother Goose, Cinderella and many others, are based on stories passed on from pagan legend and then altered and adapted to teach good little Roman Catholic children to behave themselves.

In their original, or at least the earliest published versions of these stories, they were designed to terrorize little children into compliance. This was not an unworthy goal, necessarily, those days were far more dangerous for children than these are. For example, the woods are most often portrayed as scary because little children that wandered into them faced the very real danger of getting lost, eaten or taken and sold.

Baum and his counterparts were not the first authors writing solely for entertainment, they wrote the first popular books for children that took advantage of a bunch of different trends that had been happening for some time.

Compulsory education, a good (or at least a wage-earning) economy, changes in printing technology and the advent of the lending library had more to do with this than mere frivolity.

nazgul:

It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out.

Based on your name (Nazgul) I think you agree with me that there is something dreadfull about trying to retain the wonder while leaving out the nightmares. Wherever these ancient farie tales and myths come from and whatever their purpose is they have much more deapth than the Wizard of Oz. In them as in life there are real consiquences and real choices to be made. The best modern childrens literature retains the terror that those old farie tales contained, The Lord of the Rings is probably the best example and in many ways Harry Potter follows in its footsteps. Both of these books have well defined morals, but neither are mere morality tales. From my experience books are much better moral teachers than schools. Not because schools are morally bankrupt but because the best books engage one's empathy and cause one to experience the act of making a moral choice along with the characters. While it is perhaps possible for this to happen in a school, I have certainly never experienced it.

What ancient myths have you been reading? Not having ancient language ability or a time machine to collect anything that has been passed through a dozen it would be hard to for me to have an opinion of them. The Wizard of Oz was a pretty nice read with a couple of morals (skeptism and self-confidence/empowerment, the value of friendship) but since the body count was lower than Harry Potter I guess it does not have depth. The Potter books were ok for entertainment but they were hardly some great work of ART with SUBTLY developed themes. The excessively long novels battered us with the than the needed to be with the deep message that "bigotry is bad" (against wizard, muggles, mudbloods, giants,houselves) and "dying is part of life".