It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strain Champs.

My dad, when he was a little boy, had all of the original hardcover Oz books.

So when I was a kid growing up, those were the first books that I reached for.

Editor Anne Van Damir.

People, when they think of Oz, they think of the Wizard of Oz, the first book.

But they don't know about Osma of Oz.

There were all these other strange and unusual but loving characters.

It was just amazing to me.

And here's Dorothy having all these adventures, but not just Dorothy.

There was all kinds of warring factions and royalty, but it was mainly just regular people, just trying to get

through their day. That was the thing that really struck me about the characters in Oz, and

sometimes it was a talking chicken. I don't know what it is about me and chickens,

but I love them so much, and I think it probably started with Oz.

During the time period that I first came across those books,

my parents had gone through a really horrible divorce.

And my dad left those books behind. When I became an editor and started editing that type of work, that's what really brought my dad and me back together. My dad had always

wanted to be a writer, but he ended up going to medical school, and he became a doctor instead.

And everything that I did, every book project that I worked on,

I always had him in the back of my mind.

My dad recently passed away last summer,

and when I went with my sisters

and we were looking through all of his different papers and things like that,

...