“I’m coming to San Diego for the Dr. Seuss birthday party,” Michael Patrick Hearn said by phone from New York City last week. “The organizers wanted to include other writers associated with the Hotel ...

In L. Frank Baum’s book “The Marvelous Land of Oz”—second in the Oz series—we meet H.M. Woggle-Bug, T.E. (that is, Thoroughly Educated). This marvelous creature, who had listened to years of lectures ...