It is one of America’s most enduring images: a little girl named Dorothy Gale standing in the doorway of her Kansas farmhouse and gazing out at the great, open prairie, its flatness unbroken by so much as a house or tree. In the century since L. Frank Baum wrote "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, "the story has become America’s most beloved home-grown fairy tale. Never out of print, the story about the little Kansas girl swept up by a tornado to the magical land of Oz has inspired 39 sequels, 13 by Baum himself. It has been retold in five silent movies, countless stage productions and radio broadcasts, and the classic 1939 movie musical starring Judy Garland. What the people of Kansas could not have imagined, when "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" hit their bookstores a century ago, was that it would saddle them with a stereotype known around the world: Kansas is not a good place. Even as Oz fans prepared to celebrate the centenary of the May 17, 1900 publication of "Oz,’ Kansans seemed unsure whether to thank Baum or to wish he’d picked another state to set his story in. "Dorothy’s greatest desire is to find a home and to be at home. This is a great American desire in a nation of immigrants and people who move a lot, "said Thomas Fox Averill, an English professor at Washburn University in Topeka who has con- ducted extensive research into Oz’s impact on Kansas culture. "Finding a home is a very American desire." That is a positive thing, even if that home is rural rather than urban, innocent rather than sophisticated. "That is something Kansans could teach other Americans, "Averill said. But the unqualified love so many Kansans have for their state is often ac-companied by an inferiority complex about being from Kansas--an image Averill said is fed by the movie. Claudia Larkin, a director at the Kansas tourism department, said that when she talks to outsiders, the top three things they associate with Kansas are wide-open spaces, friendly people, and Oz. The phrase "saddle them with" (Para. 4, Line. 4) probably means ______.