 First edition | |
| Author | L. Frank Baum |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Mary Cowles Clark |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature, Christmas stories |
| Publisher | Bowen Merrill |
Publication date | April 12, 1902 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| OCLC | 3343074 |
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a 1902 children's book, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark. [1] [2]
The story takes place in the Forest of Burzee and nearby lands. Baum pictures the forest as a mighty and grand forest, with "big tree-trunks, standing close together, with their roots intertwining below the earth and their branches intertwining above it;" a place of "queer, gnarled limbs" and "bushy foliage" where the rare sunbeams cast "weird and curious shadows over the mosses, the lichens and the drifts of dried leaves." [3] Among the "giant oak and fir trees" are clearings where "the grass grew green and soft as velvet." [4] The Forest is populated by Fairies, ruled by an unnamed Fairy Queen (in later books named either Lulea or Lurline), along with Nymphs, Gnomes, Pixies, and species of beings invented by Baum consisting of Ryls, Knooks, and Gigans.
At the east of the Forest of Burzee is the Laughing Valley which was empty for years until Santa Claus built his house there.
As a baby, Santa Claus is found in the Forest of Burzee by Ak: Master Woodsman of the World (a supreme immortal) and placed in the care of the lioness Shiegra, but he thereupon is adopted by the Wood Nymph Necile.
Upon reaching young adulthood, Claus is introduced by Ak to human society, wherein he sees war, brutality, poverty, child neglect, and child abuse. Because he cannot reside in Burzee as an adult, he settles in the nearby Laughing Valley of Hohaho where the immortals regularly assist him and Peter Knook gives him a little cat named Blinky.
In the Laughing Valley, Claus becomes known for kindness toward children. On one occasion, his neighbors' son Weekum visits him. Having made an image of Blinky to pass the time, Claus presents him with the finished carving, calling it a "toy". Soon, the immortals begin assisting him in the production of other carvings: the Ryls coloring the toys with their infinite paint pots (the first toy was not colored). When he makes a clay figure reminiscent of Necile, he proclaims it a "dolly" to evade naming Necile to the children ("doll" results when children shorten the name). Claus presents the first one to Bessie Blithesome, a local noblewoman, after consulting with Necile and the Queen of the Fairies about whether he should give toys to wealthy children. Later dolls resemble Bessie herself and, later still, counterfeit infant girls.
The Awgwas, evil beings who can turn invisible, steal the toys that Claus is giving to the children because the toys are preventing the children from misbehaving. This leads to Claus making his journeys by night and descending through chimneys when he is unable to enter the locked doors. The Awgwas nonetheless prevent so many of Claus's deliveries that Ak declares war upon them after failing to get them to cease their attacks. With the aid of the Asiatic Dragons, the Three-Eyed Giants of Tartary, the Goozzle-Goblins, and the Black Demons from Patalonia, the Awgwas believe their might superior to that of the immortals as they fight them in the war. The Awgwas and their allies are destroyed by their opponents with Ak killing the Awgwa King while the remaining Giants of Tartary retreated. Claus is not present for any of the battle. When it is concluded, Ak tells him that "The Awgwas have perished".
As his journeys continue, Claus is aided by two deer named Glossie and Flossie, who pull his sleigh full of toys. With their aid, he reaches the dominions of the Gnome King who wants toys for his children, but trades a string of sleigh bells for each toy given by Claus. In restriction of the deer's service to a single day annually, their supervisor Wil Knook decides upon Christmas Eve, two weeks away from the hearing, believing this will mean a year without taking the reindeer from their homes; but the Fairies retrieve the toys the Awgwas stole and bring them to Claus, allowing Claus's first Christmas to proceed in spite of Wil. As Claus continues giving gifts, he earns the title "Santa" ("Saint" in most Romance languages).
Claus sees stockings placed by the fire to dry as a good place for his surprises, but when he finds a family (sometimes taken to be Native Americans, or caricatures of the same) living in a tent with no fireplaces, he places the gifts on the branches of the trees just outside the tent.
When Claus is in his sixties, the Immortals realize he is near the end of his life. A council headed by Ak (Master Woodsman of the World), Bo (Master Mariner of the World), and Kern (Master Husbandman of the World) gather together the Gnome King, the Queen of the Water Spirits, the King of the Wind Demons, the King of the Ryls, the King of the Knooks, the King of the Sound Imps, the King of the Sleep Fays, the Fairy Queen, Queen Zurline of the Wood Nymphs, and the King of the Light Elves with the Princes Flash and Twilight to decide the fate of Santa Claus. After much debate, he is granted immortality just as the Spirit of Death comes for him.
At the end of the book, the immortal Santa Claus takes on four special deputies: Wisk the Fairy, Peter the Knook, Kilter the Pixie, and Nuter the Ryl.
Baum's short follow-up, "A Kidnapped Santa Claus", further develops his relationship with his deputies, who must work in his place when Claus is captured by five Daemons. Later, children's parents and various toy-making companies take part in gift-giving, and Santa Claus withdraws to his valley.
A graphic novel adaptation of the story was published by Tundra Publishing Ltd. in 1992 and illustrated by Mike Ploog. An animated movie was created by Rankin-Bass (and was their last Animagic, or stop-motion, special) in 1985, followed by another animated version of Baum's book made by Mike Young Productions and directed by Glen Hill in 2000. The book also served as the basis for an anime series, Shōnen Santa no Daibôken ("Young Santa's Adventures") in 1994, and The Oz Kids video, Who Stole Santa? (1996).
The Rankin-Bass production first aired on CBS on December 17, 1985. [5] The special truncates much of the story (it ran in a one-hour time slot) and simplifies some of the motivations, but its major alterations are setting up the hearing over the Mantle of Immortality as a frame story explaining just why Claus (J. D. Roth/Earl Hammond) deserves the mantle, although there is an edit that makes it difficult to realize that the scene in which Ak (Alfred Drake) calls the council when first finding the infant in the woods does not occur in the same time period as the main story. In addition, Shiegra accompanies Claus to the Laughing Valley, in which, unlike the book, it is always Winter. A similar compromise toward popular culture is Claus's now eight reindeer, albeit unnamed. Peter Knook, a rather crusty but amiable fellow, replaces most of the other Knooks, save the Protector (King) and two strangers, and declares "only on Christmas Eve" for the reindeer without any argument or explanation. One important new character, Tingler, a Sound Imp (Robert McFadden) also accompanies Claus and gives him someone to talk to.
When the show premiered, the book was not as easily available, and many Oz fans[ who? ] who only knew of the book were surprised to discover that Tingler was not one of Baum's creations, so true was the character to the author's spirit. Earle Hyman portrayed the King of the Awgwas, and Leslie Miller played Necile. Most of the other voices were performed by Peter Newman and Lynne Lipton. Larry Kenney was the Commander of the Wind Demons, who initially served as a devil's advocate to Ak at the fateful hearing, but soon became the Immortal most approving of giving the Mantle to Claus. [6] Most of the Immortals' titles were changed to alleviate them all being kings and queens.
Screenwriter Julian P. Gardner created a musical production number, "Big Surprise" as the children at Weekum's orphanage plead with Santa Claus for more toy cats. Other songs include the chorus "Babe in the Woods" and the powerful chant, "Ora e Sempre (Today and Forever)" representing the immortals. Bernard Hoffer composed the music, as well as setting a quatrain by Baum inspired by Claus's famous laugh. The presentation of the Christmas tree is different; Claus, realizing his death is imminent, decorates a tree with ornaments and suggests it should be his memorial.
This, along with Pinocchio's Christmas , are the only Rankin-Bass Christmas specials without a celebrity narrator. Originally broadcast on CBS, this special regularly aired on the Freeform cable network, as part of their annual "25 Days of Christmas", along with most of the other Rankin-Bass animated Christmas specials. As of 2018, AMC currently airs the special. [7]
The Mike Young production, which also uses an ampersand for the title, features Robby Benson as "Nicholas", who plays a bigger part in this film than in the earlier version. Claus at his very oldest is portrayed by Jim Cummings. While the Rankin-Bass production made the sequence with the Awgwas a centerpiece, in this film, they become running villains, and the story is structured around the upcoming battle. Some of the more fairy tale-oriented names are changed—Bessie Blithesome becomes "Natalie" (Kath Soucie) and Weekum becomes "Ethan" (Brianne Siddall). Neither version mentions Lerd by name. Here the Lord of Lerd is given the same voice, Maurice LaMarche, as the King of the Awgwas, now called Mogorb. LaMarche also plays an unidentified Bo, an argumentative figure at the film's climax, which is crosscut with the Spirit of Death's approach to Nicholas's house. Shiegra does not accompany Nicholas to Laughing Valley, but visits him at his home when she is near death to say goodbye, after which he creates a large monument in her honor. The Gnome King's exchange of gifts is replaced with Natalie at young adulthood returning her doll to Nicholas to make up in her own small way for all the toys stolen by the Awgwas: Nicholas proclaims that others should follow his example and give and receive gifts. The biggest change is the transformation of Wisk into a Brian Froud-designed long-tailed Pixie (Carlos Alazraqui), introduced early in the film and serving as comic relief. He suggests the name "Necileloclaus", that Ak, narrating the story, changes to "Nicholas", rather than Baum's "Neclaus". A significant thematic change is Nicholas spreading information about the immortals far and wide, to the point he never coins the term "dolly", just mass-produces "Neciles". Dixie Carter portrayed Necile and Hal Holbrook played Ak, who chooses Christmas as the day of Claus's yearly rides for its significance, much to the delight of Wil Knook, for the same reasoning as in the book. Misha Segal provides a Celtic-inflected score, with song lyrics by Harriet Schock.
The kidnapping of Claus by the Awgwas is the basis of the Oz Kids video, "Who Stole Santa?", which appears to draw no material from "A Kidnapped Santa Claus". An adult version of Dorothy Gale tells the life story of Santa based on the book to her children and her friends. (Note: the Awgwas are excised from Dorothy's tale.)
The major change in Mike Ploog's graphic novel is placing the Gnome King in charge of nearly everyone (Baum's hierarchy placed only the "Great Creator" above the three Masters of the world) and making him resemble the Nome King as he appeared in Return to Oz , a film for which Ploog was a conceptual artist. He also has a Knook and a Ryl serve as Claus's constant companions. The Gnome King has been omitted from most other adaptations, presumably to avoid confusion with the malevolent character in Return to Oz, though an unidentified figure voiced by Peter Newman appears on the council over immortality in the Rankin-Bass version. Based on the lineup in the book, he could be only the Gnome King, Bo, or Kern, but his stature leads one to guess the Gnome King.
Shōnen Santa no Daibôken ran for 24 episodes, airing between April 6 to September 21, 1996. [8]
The characters and cast include:
An animated feature film, a co-production between Hyde Park Entertainment and Toonz Entertainment as well as the Gang of 7 Animation, was planned for a 2010 holiday theatrical release. [9]
The script was written by Tom Tataranowicz and Mark Edward Edens with Tataranowicz also acting as director together with Dick Sebast and Rich Arons. The movie would have been the first animated film for Hyde Park. Production was set to begin in November 2008 at the Toonz Animation Studio in India. Hyde Park Entertainment would have distributed the movie internationally and share domestic rights with G7. [9]
The story would have followed the establishment of Santa mythology depicting both the formative years as well as a battle against evil. [9] The film was ultimately canceled.
In March 2014, Deadline Hollywood reported that an origin story of Santa Claus, Winter's Knight, inspired by The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, sold to Sony studios for $1 million. [10]
The script is written by Jake Thornton and Ben Lustig and is set to be directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg.
The December 18, 1904 edition of Baum's short-running newspaper series Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz , entitled "How the Woggle-Bug and His Friends Visited Santa Claus," relating how the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Jack Pumpkinhead, and H. M. Woggle-Bug, T. E. make several toys based on themselves and the Sawhorse. They bring them to Santa Claus in the Laughing Valley for distribution. Claus claims that there are not enough toys for all of the children, but he will make more for next year's visit. His reindeer and sleigh also win a race against the Gump.
In 1904, a short story called "A Kidnapped Santa Claus", by Baum, appeared in The Delineator magazine. It was illustrated by Frederick Richardson, who had also illustrated Baum's Queen Zixi of Ix . The story deals with Santa Claus's kidnapping by the Daemons of the caves, in an effort to thwart his yearly delivery of toys. However, Claus's assistants complete the task for him, and later attempt an unnecessary rescue.
In Baum's 1909 Oz book, The Road to Oz , Santa Claus is one of guests of honor at Princess Ozma's birthday party in the Emerald City. He brings along some Ryls and Knooks with him. They return to the Laughing Valley in giant soap bubbles created by The Wizard of Oz.
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Typically small humanoids who live underground, gnome characteristics are reinterpreted to suit various storytellers and artists.
The Road to Oz is the fifth book in L. Frank Baum's Oz series. It was originally published on July 10, 1909 and documents the adventures of Dorothy Gale's fourth visit to the Land of Oz.
Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment was an American production company located in New York City, and known for its seasonal television specials, usually done in stop motion animation. Rankin/Bass's stop-motion productions are recognizable by their visual style of doll-like characters with spheroid body parts and ubiquitous powdery snow using an animation technique called Animagic.
The Nome King is a fictional character created by American author L. Frank Baum. He is introduced in Baum's third Oz book Ozma of Oz (1907). He also appears in many of the continuing sequel Oz novels also written by Baum. Although the character of the Wicked Witch of the West is the most notable and famous Oz villain, it is actually the Nome King who is the most frequent antagonist throughout the entire book series.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a 1964 stop motion Christmas animated television special produced by Videocraft International, Ltd. and currently distributed by NBCUniversal Television Distribution. It first aired December 6, 1964, on the NBC television network in the United States and was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of The General Electric Fantasy Hour. The special was based on the 1949 Johnny Marks song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" which was itself based on the poem of the same name written in 1939 by Marks's brother-in-law, Robert L. May. Since 1972, the special has aired on CBS. The network unveiled a high-definition, digitally remastered version of the program in 2005, re-scanned frame-by-frame from the original 35 mm film elements.
Motion pictures featuring Santa Claus constitute their own subgenre of the Christmas film genre. Early films of Santa revolve around similar simple plots of Santa's Christmas Eve visit to children. In 1897, in a short film called Santa Claus Filling Stockings, Santa Claus is simply filling stockings from his pack of toys. Another film called Santa Claus and the Children was made in 1898. A year later, a film directed by George Albert Smith titled Santa Claus was created. In this picture, Santa Claus enters the room from the fireplace and proceeds to trim the tree. He then fills the stockings that were previously hung on the mantle by the children. After walking backward and surveying his work, he suddenly darts at the fireplace and disappears up the chimney.
In traditional festive legend and popular culture, Santa Claus's reindeer are said to pull a sleigh through the night sky to help Santa Claus deliver gifts to children on Christmas Eve.
American Fairy Tales is the title of a collection of twelve fantasy stories by L. Frank Baum, published in 1901 by the George M. Hill Company, the firm that issued The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the previous year. The cover, title page, and page borders were designed by Ralph Fletcher Seymour; each story was furnished with two full-page black-and-white illustrations, by either Harry Kennedy, Ike Morgan, or Norman P. Hall.
Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town is a 1970 American stop motion Christmas television special produced by Rankin/Bass Productions in New York, New York. The film is narrated by Fred Astaire and stars the voices of Mickey Rooney, Keenan Wynn, Robie Lester, Joan Gardner and Paul Frees, as well as an assistant song performance by the Westminster Children's Choir. The film tells the story of how Santa Claus and several Claus-related Christmas traditions came to be. It is based on the hit Christmas song, "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town", which was written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie for Leo Feist, Inc. and introduced on radio by Eddie Cantor in 1934; and the story of Saint Nicholas.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys is a 2001 American-Canadian direct-to-video animated Christmas adventure musical film directed by Bill Kowalchuk for GoodTimes Entertainment. It was released on VHS and DVD on October 30, 2001. The film takes place after the events of the original special. The film thus revisits classic characters like Yukon Cornelius, Hermey the elf, Abominable Snow Monster, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who is now famous in the North Pole.
Pinocchio's Christmas is a 1980 American-Japanese Christmas stop motion television special produced by Rankin/Bass Productions that is a holiday adaptation of the 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. The special was originally aired on ABC on December 3, 1980. It aired annually during the Christmas season on Freeform and as of 2018 airs on AMC.
In English-speaking cultures, a Christmas elf is a diminutive elf that lives with Santa Claus at the North Pole and acts as his helper. Christmas elves are usually depicted as green- or red-clad, with large, pointy ears and wearing pointy hats. They are most often depicted as humanoids, but sometimes as furry mammals with tails. Santa's elves are often said to make the toys in Santa's workshop and take care of his reindeer, among other tasks.
"A Kidnapped Santa Claus" is a Christmas-themed short story by American writer L. Frank Baum; it has been called "one of Baum's most beautiful stories" and constitutes an influential contribution to the mythology of Christmas.
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a 1985 American-Japanese Christmas stop motion animated television special. It was produced by Rankin/Bass Productions, based on the 1902 children's book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum, the writer of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The special first aired December 17, 1985 on CBS in the United States. This was Rankin/Bass's final "Animagic" stop motion production with later releases including traditional animation. Notably, this special was an adaptation of a novel and is not connected to the continuity created by previous Rankin/Bass Productions.
Nelebel's Fairyland is a twentieth-century fairy tale, a fantasy short story written by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz. The story was first printed in the June 1905 issue of The Russ, the student newspaper of Russ High School in San Diego, California. It was reprinted in The Baum Bugle in 1962, and again in a 1980 collection of some of Baum's short fiction.
"The Runaway Shadows, or A Trick of Jack Frost" is a twentieth-century fairy tale, a fantasy short story written by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz. The story is one of a small cluster of Baum narratives that involve his fantasy land the Forest of Burzee and its exotic denizens. Arguably, Burzee constitutes Baum's second most important fantasy realm after Oz itself, being employed in his novels The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) and Queen Zixi of Ix (1905) and several of his short stories, and is referenced in The Road to Oz (1909).
The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus is a 2000 American direct-to-video animated fantasy film created by Mike Young Productions and released by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. It is based on the 1902 L. Frank Baum novel of the same name.
This is a complete bibliography for American children's writer L. Frank Baum.
Necile is a wood nymph who becomes the adoptive mother of Santa Claus in the 1902 novel The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.
Santa Claus is a 1912 fantasy silent film in which a little girl dreams that she goes to Toyland where she helps Santa Claus in his workshop.
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus public domain audiobook at LibriVox 
