The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a 1902 children's book, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark. Setting 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." Among the "giant oak and fir trees" are clearings where "the grass grew green and soft as velvet." 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. Plot 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.