American Fairy Tales (1901)

Nine of the twelve stories in this book are set in America, and two of the others elsewhere on the earth-- only one is in a fairy-land. But almost all of them are enjoyable. My favorite was probably "The Box of Robbers", where a young girl finds a box containing Italian bandits in her attic, bandits who are now out of work, for in America, no one has anything left to steal. Most of the other stories contain a similar mix of whimsy and pessimism, and it works really well. After reading The Master Key, where the pessimism swamps out the whimsy, I was ready to be happy that Baum wrote so few fantasy stories set on the earth, but after this, I'm disappointed. A gem of a collection that deserves a much wider audience than it has had.