Читать книгу The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Книга для чтения на английском языке - Lyman Frank Baum - Страница 2

Introduction

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

Yet |Однако| 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 |джин, карлик и фея| are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling |леденящими кровь| incidents devised |придуманные| by their authors to point |указать на| a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore |таким образом| the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses |избавляется| with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind |С этими мыслями|, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being |стремится быть| a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment |удивление| and joy are retained |сохранены| and the heartaches and nightmares are left out |оставлены|.

L. Frank Baum

Chicago, April, 1900.