In the beginning, there was a storm, a "common magic storm," as the girl Elli, the main character of the fairy tales, called it. Although the storm conjured up by an evil fairy ran out of steam after just three hours, it turned so many things upside down that an entire book series revolves around how they were set right again. The first story, "The Wizard of the Emerald City," was created as a free adaptation of Lyman Frank Baum's book "The Wizard of Oz," an American writer who lived from 1856 to 1919. It tells the tale of how Elli and her friends from Wonderland embarked on a long and perilous journey to the Great Wizard. Numerous letters from readers prompted Wolkow to further develop the fairy tale. The stories were vividly and creatively illustrated by the graphic artist L. Wladimirski.