{{Short description|American literary critic}} '''Michael Patrick Hearn''' is an American literary scholar as well as a man of letters specializing in children's literature and its illustration. His works include ''[[The Annotated Wizard of Oz]]'' (1973/2000), ''[[The Annotated Christmas Carol]]'' (1977/2003), and ''[[The Annotated Huckleberry Finn]]'' (2001). He considers the three most quintessential American novels to be ''[[Moby-Dick]]'' by [[Herman Melville]], ''[[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]]'' by [[L. Frank Baum]], and ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' by [[Mark Twain]].<ref>''Oz: The American Fairyland'' documentary by Gayle O'Neal and Leonard A. Swann, Jr., 1997</ref>
He is an expert on L. Frank Baum and is currently writing a biography about him, which sets forth to correct the numerous errors in previous biographies, many based on [[Frank Joslyn Baum]]'s out of print and largely mythological ''[[To Please a Child]]''.
As an Oz and L. Frank Baum scholar, he also edited ''The Critical Heritage Edition of the Wizard of Oz'' for [[Schocken Books]] (1986), wrote the introduction to the first published version of the screenplay of ''[[The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)]]''. He appears in the documentaries ''Oz: the American Fairyland'' and ''[[Matilda Joslyn Gage]]'' (1983), credited as an "Authority on L. Frank Baum". He gave the keynote address at the [[Centennial]] [[Convention (meeting)|convention]] of ''[[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]]'' mounted by [[The International Wizard of Oz Club]], and often makes public appearances in which he lectures on Baum.
Hearn was a student at [[Hamilton College]] in 1968-69 and then transferred to [[Bard College]], where he graduated in 1972. At Hamilton, he was encouraged to become an author by one of his professors, [[Alex Haley]].<ref>[source re Haley and Hamilton: Hearn, “A Writer’s Roots”, NY Times Book Review, p. 1 (Dec. 19, 2021); source re Bard: items in www.annandaleonline.org]</ref> His first book, ''The Annotated Wizard of Oz'', was completed when he was a student at Bard.
==Selected works== Other books as author or editor include:
*''50 years of [[Wanda Gág]]'s [[Millions of Cats]]: 1928-1978'' (1978) *''McLoughlin Brothers, publishers, 1828-1978'' (1980) *''Victorian Fairy Tales'' (1980) *''[[Peter Newell]], American Comic Illustrator'' (1983) *''The Chocolate Book: A Sampler for Boys and Girls'' (1983) *''The Best of the Andrew Lang Fairy Tale Book'' (1986) *''[[The Porcelain Cat]]'' (children's picture book, 1987) *''[[The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)|The Wizard of Oz]]: The Screenplay'', (1989) *''[[W.W. Denslow]]: The Other Wizard of Oz'', (1996) *''The Victorian Fairy Tale Book'' (1990) *''65 years of Wanda Gág's Millions of Cats: 1928-1993'' (1992) *''Native American Legends : Lakota'' (1995) *''Myth, Magic, and Mystery: One Hundred Years of American Children's Book Illustration'' (1996) *''From the Silver Age to Stalin: Russian Children's Book Illustration'' In preparation, (2008)
He has also written articles for ''[[The Horn Book Magazine|Horn Book]]'' and ''[[The Baum Bugle]]'' and Liner Notes for Caedmon Records.
==References== {{BLP sources|date=July 2007}} <references/>
==External links== {{Portal |Children's literature}} * {{IMDb name|0372506}} * {{LCAuth|n79042157|Michael Patrick Hearn|24|}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hearn, Michael Patrick}} [[Category:20th-century American biographers]] [[Category:American male biographers]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:Place of birth missing (living people)]] [[Category:Year of birth missing (living people)]] [[Category:American literary critics]] [[Category:Children's literature criticism]] [[Category:Oz (franchise) studies]] [[Category:21st-century American biographers]]