Glinda Of OZ!

Glinda of OZ is the fourteenth installment of the OZ series and the final book written by L. Frank Baum, the creator of OZ. Baum died after completing this novel but before it could be published in 1920, two decades after the publication of the original The Wizard of OZ. Sadly, like so many of the later OZ books this one too is overwhelmed by a cast made up of pretty much anyone who had appeared previously in the series.

It begins well enough when Ozma and Dorothy consult Glinda and then go on a mission to the less known areas in the North of OZ where they have become aware of an impending war between the Flatheads and the Skeezers. The Flatheads are just that, with diminished brainpower. They are led by a tyrannical sorcerer named Su-Dic. He threatens Ozma and Dorothy who move on to the Skeezer city which sits in a lake. The queen of the Skeezers is also a mystic and as it turns out a tyrant as well. When the war happens the city of the Skeezers is sunk to the bottom of the lake for security, but this time with Ozma and Dorothy inside it. The battle goes poorly for Queen Coo-ee-oh who is turned into a swan. Since the city can only be raised by her magic the Skeezers and hour heroines are stuck.

(MGM's Glinda with Dorothy)

Glinda becomes aware of this threat and gathers a mob of trusted OZ people to journey to the rescue. The Wizard is included as are the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, the Patchwork Girl, Cap'n Bill, Button Bright, and Jack Pumpkinhead among others. This gang get to the lands of the Skeezers and find that they cannot get the sunken city rise. A solution presents itself but it's a very roundabout journey. 

(Can you see Glinda's nipples?)

Maybe I'm just burned out on OZ books, but this one seemed to have even less spark than many of the lackluster later efforts by Baum. Despite being the title character Glinda is not in the book all that much. One thing though, it's a book ripe with different kinds of magic. I read in some sources that Ruth Plumly Thompson, who takes over the series, might have had a small hand in polishing this one for the publisher. One thing for certain is that L. Frank Baum created a blockbuster moneymaker with his OZ books, the first real modern American fairy tales. His publishers were not going to allow the series to stop with his demise. 

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One more visit to OZ when we take a look at some of the movies derived from the books. 

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The Magic Of OZ!

The Magic of OZ - A Faithful Record of the Remarkable Adventures of Dorothy and Trot and the Wizard of OZ, together with the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, and Cap'n Bill in their successful search for a Magical and Beautiful Birthday Present for Princess Ozma of OZ

The title and wildly elaborate sub-title rather say it all -- almost. The story begins on Mount Munch on the far reaches of OZ and at the top of the mountain live the Hyups. One young Hyup is the boy Kiki Aru who grows restless and when he learns a powerful magic word of transformation (Pyrzqxql) leaves his home and seeks adventure. He meets Ruggedo the Gnome King who had been banished from OZ and together they hatch a scheme to return to OZ and encourage the wild animals there to revolt against the rule of Ozma. 

Meanwhile Dorothy and Trot and others start to wonder what they can get Ozma for her upcoming birthday. Dorothy wants to make a cake with monkeys hidden inside. Trot learns of a magical flower from the Glass Cat which is on a remote island. So, they head off to look, the Wizard with Dororthy as they ride the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger and Trot and Cap'n Bill on foot. The former turn up in the forest at the same time the two baddies are pitching their scheme and get changed into various animals. The latter get trapped on the island of the flower literally when they take root. Of course, eventually they are all saved, but it's a wild ride. 

Now I'm not the target audience for these books by any stretch of the imagination, but Baum's constant fault in my estimation is that he's always adding characters and never taking them away. And apparently his readers expected to have their favorites at least name checked. I think every OZ character is at Ozma's party at the end of the story save perhaps for the elusive glass cat. I found I liked the Eureka the glass cat a lot in this one as her stuck up attitude was fun and very catlike. 

The Magic of OZ was the last OZ book to be published in his lifetime. The authorship of the next one is open to some speculation. We'll get into that next with Glinda of OZ. 

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The Tin Woodman Of OZ!

The Tin Woodman of OZ: A Faithful Story of the Astonishing Adventure Undertaken by the Tin Woodman, Assisted by Woot the Wanderer, the Scarecrow of OZ, and Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter by L. Frank Baum is the twelfth main novel in the series and was first published in 1918. As usual the novel features illustrations by John R. Neill. The OZ books had been declining in sales but this one changed the trajectory of the series. 

Woot the Wanderer is a youngster who wanders into the Winkie kingdom ruled by the Tin Woodman. He and the Scarecrow are reminiscing, and the Woodman is reminded of Nimme Aimee,a long-lost love before he was transformed. He wants to make her his queen and to that end, the trio strike out for the land of the Munchkins. As you might suspect they run into some trouble. 

After getting away from some pernicious balloon people called the Loonies, the trio fall into the clutches of a giantess who uses magic to turn the Woodman into a tin owl, the Scarecrow into a stuffed bear, and Woot into a green monkey. They also find Polychrome already a captive having been changed into canary. The transformed quartet eventually escape and find their way eventually to the home of Jinjur in an earlier story had led a revolt against OZ. She, having reformed, raises caramels now and greets them warmly once their identities are known. 

The scene then switches to OZ where we discover that Ozma has been keeping an eye on our group and she and Dorothy come to the rescue and quickly the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Polychrome are themselves again. Woot proves to be a bit more difficult but at last it is accomplished. They then head off to complete the quest and run into Captain Fyter the Tin Soldier, another being who has suffered the fate of the Woodman. They then encounter Ku-Klip who made both the Woodman and the Soldier and learn that their parts that had been replaced were fitted together to make a whole other composite being named Chopfyt. After some more difficulties they at last find Mount Munch and Nimme Aimme who is happy with her husband, the aforementioned Chopfyt. It's an abrupt end to their quest but that's what they find and so they head home. 

This adventure was a better read than the last simply because the cast was smaller. We had four main protagonists and not a mob headed out to search for the goal. We never lose track of any of them, and each is given a chance to shine and contribute to the quest. We do learn that OZ was once a more normal land until in its far past the fairy Queen Lurline made it so that no one ever aged. I expected to find out more about Woot the Wanderer, but in this story he's pretty much a cypher. The interplay between the Woodman and the Scarecrow was excellent. 

Next up is The Magic of OZ, the last OZ story written by Baum published in his lifetime. 

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The Lost Princess Of OZ!

The Lost Princess of OZ by L. Frank Baum is the eleventh book in the OZ series which continued into the 1960's. And after a few retrofits, we get an OZ book proper. These are children's books and so I cannot grade according to my preferences as an adult, so it makes sense to me that Baum at the very least namechecks most all the characters who have appeared in the series so far. But it's getting to be quite a list. In this one he goes further and has quite a lot of them actively involved and frankly it feels like too many. 

The title is accurate. Ozma the ruler of OZ along with assorted magical items go missing and Dorothy leads a kingdom wide search for her. She divides the players into teams to search the whole of OZ both fully explored and otherwise. In her cadre we have Dorothy herself, Toto (who talks quite a bit in this one), the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard of OZ, Button Bright, Trot, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, Betsy Bobbin, and more. It all gets to be a bit much to keep track of everyone. They go past spinning rubber mountains to find a mysterious realm in which the strangely shaped folks eat only thistles. At the same time that this is happening Frogman (a giant frog who considers himself the smartest creature in the kingdom) has left his kingdom of Yip where he was considered the smarted creature around to help Cayke the Cookie Maker find her special and also magical golden dishpan.  Turns the culprit is a chap dubbed Ugu the Shoemaker and eventually our two teams join forces to confront him. 

Where I have breezed through some of the earlier novels, this one was a trudge. Perhaps it the avalanche of characters, because many of them disappear into the crowd. Why include them if they aren't going to do anything special. Also, I think Baum's tone seems to have shifted from a spritely sense of fun to a more rigorous write-by-numbers approach. He had been trying to get away from OZ for years, but always he had to come back to the series to make money. Perhaps he just considered it a chore. That's being unfair to the book most likely, but that was my experience reading it. 

Next time it's The Tin Woodman of OZ and we hopefully will get some attention paid to Nick Chopper who has been surprisingly absent from most of the stories. 

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Rinkitink In OZ!

Rinkitink in OZ is an odd addition to the OZ canon. The story involves a small island which is invaded and the population taken into slavery. The only folks available to save them all is a young prince spared by chance and an overweight visiting monarch of questionable character along with his talking goat. Now that I've actually written that sentence, maybe this oddball is an OZ book after all. The book began life as a non-OZ project developed soon after the success of the first OZ titles around the same time that Baum was writing classic fairy tale stuff like The Enchanted Island of Yew and Queen Zixi of Ix. But the grind to keep putting out OZ material in 1916 was such that Baum reached back to his unpublished effort and added bits to it to make it an OZ book. 

The story begins on Pingaree where a good king by the name of Kittikut is trying to maintain things on the small island of Pingaree. He dreads an invasion from the islands of Regos and Coregos and this proves to be a valid fear. Before that invasion though he and his court are visited by a portly monarch named King Rinkitink and his talking goat named Bilbil. This stout fellow is a blowhard and a gourmand. After the devastating attack Rinkitink ends up in a well and the young Prince Inga is safe because he was good distance from the savagery. These two set out to save the people, Rinkitink reluctantly. Prince Inga is aided by three magic pearls, the first of which gives him strength, the second which gives him protection, and the third which gives him wisdom. But soon after getting to where his parents and people are imprisoned, he loses the shoes. He eventually gets them back when a peasant girl finds them. He and Rinkitink then have to travel to the kingdom of the Gnomes where they discover that the Gnome King is holding his parents. The Gnome King is the first OZ character to appear in the book and later on page 190 out of 222, Dorothy and the Wizard travel to the Gnome kingdom to help. And as it turns out Bilbil has a secret as well. 

This is an OZ book by the narrowest of margins. It seems that Baum did little aside from having the Gnomes, and later Dorothy and gang arrive as a garden variety deus ex machina to save the day. We get the usual roll call of names of other OZ folks at the end. It's getting crowded in OZ, I think. I was put in mind of the Avengers who after a few decades seemed to have a roster of dozens. Rinkitink in OZ is an okay read, but it has little to do with OZ. 

Next up is an actual book about OZ titled The Lost Princess of OZ. But before that I think we need to take a look at some of Baum's other OZ-adjacent titles. 

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The Adventures Of Trot And Cap'n Bill!

L. Frank Baum was tired of OZ and so he tried his hand at creating new and varied fantasy landscapes to entertain the vast audience which checked in for the OZ. He mostly failed at this endeavor. He'd written a few tales titled The Enchanted Island of Yew and Queen Zixi od Ix among others when he tried to break away from OZ the first time. 

The second time in 1911 he went under the sea with two new protagonists, the first of which was titled The Sea Faires. We meet Trot whose real name is Mayre Griffith and her unofficial uncle Cap'n Bill Weedles. They are a pair, her representing the hope of youth and him showcasing the relative cynicism of age.  Trot's father is captain of the same ship that Cap'n Bill once helmed and during his long absences Bill helped her mother look after Trot. One day they muse about mermaids and before you know heads appear from the sea and real mermaids prove the myth. Quicker than that both Trot and Bill agree to go under the sea with the mermaids to explore and the story kicks off. The duo is given a tour of the undersea world until they fall into the clutches of the villainous Zog the Magician, a rather horrid creature not unmindful of Lovecraft. 

This is a little bit darker than any of the OZ books I've read so far. There is even a bit of actual potential terror in the story. The whimsy though is still abundant throughout the majority of the yarn. 

In 1912's Sky Island Trot and Cap'n Bill are back. But this time, due to a hope to juice the sales, they meet up OZ characters Button Bright and Polychrome, thus making these books an OZ spin-off series. It begins when Trot meets a strange boy with a magic flying umbrella that has transported him across the country. (Mary Poppins was published two decades later. Just saying.) That boy is Button Bright and soon enough Trot and Cap'n Bill are trying to figure out how the three of them can use the umbrella to go aloft. They touch down on a floating island called appropriately enough "Sky Island" and are made prisoners by the crazed and cruel king of a strange race of rubber-necked, blue-skinned people who likes to "Patch" people or to be specific, slice them in half and combine them with other people who have likewise been sliced. Later they escape and get to the other side of the island after crossing a foggy boundary full of giant frogs and discover a race of roly-poly, pink-skinned folks who are only a little bit more pleasant. And to top it all off a war breaks out between these two types of folks. 

This book felt a little lighter in tone than its predecessor as Baum was clearly trying to evoke the OZ atmosphere in a new realm.  That said, there are a number of rather stark situations in this yarn such as the torturous "Patching" and the war itself.  But like its mate, a decent read. 

Why did I take time to look at these two non-OZ books. Check in tomorrow to find out. 

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Tik-Tok OF OZ!

The mechanical man Tik-Tok is one of Frank Baum's more clever notions. This "robot" operates when he is wound up properly like a watch and he is prone to run down at the most inconvenient times. That said, he is a stalwart ally against the most frightening foes. He was introduced in the third novel Ozma of OZ, and makes a few appearances along the way. He's a robot, but no one uses that name since it wouldn't be coined for decade after his creation. Tik-Tok of OZ is the eighth installment of the series by Baum and it was published in 1914, after he'd decided to give the public what it wanted and not what he preferred. 

I think he looks remarkably like Teddy Roosevelt, though I don't understand any particular meaning attached to this resemblance. I guess John R. Neill had to get his inspiration from somewhere. 

The story begins when the Queen of a tiny kingdom on the outskirts of OZ gets the notion to conquer the world and she raises an army from her population of dozens and marches off to do just that. Meanwhile a young girl named Betsy Bobbin and a mule named Hank are drawn to OZ after a terrible ship disaster and they wander around until they meet the Shaggy Man and then later others such as Polychrome, the daughter of the Rainbow and a freshly plucked Rose Queen who it turns out is kin to Ozma. It's about this time they find Tik-Tok and wind him up. The gang head to the land of the Nome King to find Shaggy Man's brother who has been missing for quite some time. 

Their adventures lead to the other side of the world through an enormous magical tube and there they encounter a very powerful magical being called "Tititi-Hoochoo" or more simply "Private Citizen". He ultimately sends them back to their usual haunts the by way of a dragon with orders that the Nome King be punished for sending them there in the first place. The whole shebang doesn't actually end up in OZ until the very end. Frankly this one read a bit slowly, and the mob of characters collected in the first part of the story seemed to overwhelm the narrative. Baum had a habit of assembling a bunch of characters in the story and then seeming to forget them. That happens here to a greater degree.

It turns out that the novel was an adaptation by Baum of his own play titled The Tik-Tok Man of OZ produced in 1913. Alas, the play wasn't very successful. But that's a positively charming poster. Maybe this fact is why this OZ story reads a bit differently than its predecessors. 

More OZ coming up, but first there will be a bit of a detour. It will all make sense. 

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The Patchwork Girl Of OZ!

Frank Baum's plan had been to wrap up the OZ series with the sixth volume in 1910, but the need for money saw him return to the series three years later with The Patchwork Girl of OZ. Since in the last novel he'd sealed the OZ dimension off from the planet Earth, he had to concoct a way to rationalize another tale's creation, so he said he was in telegraph connection with Dorothy, and so had access to new adventures. (I was reminded of the way Edgar Rice Burroughs has the character Jason Gridley is able to use his "Gridley Wave" to make contact with David Innes in Pellucidar to give him more inner world adventures in 1930.) 

The story gives us a new gang of idiots to follow. The core character is a young boy named Ojo the Unlucky who lives with his taciturn uncle in the forests of Munchkin land. They meet up with a magician named Dr. Pipt who is the one who actually made the "Powder of Life" which had animated Jack Pumpkinhead among others in earlier novels. This time the stuff is used to bring to life a girl fabricated from a patchwork quilt, who was intended as a servant. But Pipt's wife and Ojo's uncle are afflicted by stuff that makes them into living statues. 

So, it falls to Ojo, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, a glass cat named Bungle, and a strange cube-shaped critter called the Woozy to trek across OZ to gather the necessary materials to make them well. The group eventually hook up with more familiar denizens of OZ such as the Shaggy Man, the Scarecrow (who cottons to Scraps), and Dorothy and Toto among many others.  

These familiar faces help them with their quest. The highlight of this book is the rambunctious nature of Scraps, who cares little for convention. 

This novel was adapted to silent film in 1914 by Baum himself with his own movie-making outfit, and it is one of only three surviving films from The OZ Film Manufacturing Company, and it was the sole effort by the company to be distributed by Paramount which itself was only a year old.  The Patchwork Girl herself is played by a man (and it shows) robbing the part of the innocent female charm of the book's original. The story also adds a romance angle which only takes up space and Ojo is played by a girl, yet is supposed to be a boy and that switches in the story as well. So, all in all a rather ineffective affair. See it at this link. 

But that said, I did enjoy reading the story and I look forward the next one titled TikTok of OZ. 

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Little Wizard Stories Of OZ!

Frank Baum enjoyed the success of the OZ series, but he was always bristling to bring new and different stories to his vast audience and so attempted to end the OZ series with 1910's The Emerald City of OZ. But those other efforts largely were unsuccessful and facing economic hardship he returned to OZ with The Patchwork Girl of OZ in 1913. In the interim he produced six little books for very young readers to attract those readers to the OZ series. The collection titled Little Wizard Stories of OZ brings together those six little books originally published independently. They are graced with a great deal of artwork by John R. Neill and tell brief vignettes featuring many of the OZ favorites. 

The Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger serve as official guard for Ozma the Queen of OZ, but that proves to be a boring gig at times, so they decide to spend some time getting back to their roots and eat a baby and tear up a citizen. They of course change their minds when the moments come. 

Dorothy and Toto like to spend time wandering in the country when they get bored with the doings in OZ. The Little Wizard suggests that's too dangerous, but they ignore him. The have reason to remember his cautionary advice when they run into the size-changing Crinklink who takes them both prisoner. 

Tiktok the Mechanical Man pays a visit to the Nome King in order to get a few new springs to make him more efficient. The Nome King in rage smashes Titkok and orders him cast into a dark pit. But thankfully Kaliko, one of the Nome King's servants attempts to put Tiktok together again to avoid Ozma's retribution. 

Ozma and the Little Wizard run afoul of three imps named Udent, Olite and Ertinent. When the Wizard changes the three imps into bushes the trouble only gets worse. The same is the case when he changes those shrubs into pigs. 

Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse go to save two kids who have been captured by the King of the Squirrels for taking some of the store nuts the squirrels will need in winter. When Jack's head is smashed, the adventure is really only beginning when the Little Wizard lends a hand. 

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman decide to go on a sailing jaunt, but things get prickly quickly when they capsize. Crows gather as the Scarecrow tries to rescue the Woodman who is trapped on the bottom on the bottom of the riverbed. It's not long before the Woodman begins to rust, and the Scarecrow starts to lose parts of his face due to the water. Once again, the Little Wizard rides to help. 

Baum returned to OZ full time with 1913's The Patchwork Girl of OZ. More on that next time when we pick up the series this summer. 

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The Emerald City Of OZ!

After a few novels which were largely structured as whimsical travelogues we get something of a proper plot in The Emeral City of OZ. Dorothy Gale does not abandon her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry this time, but rather goes to OZ with the express mission to help them. It seems that the combination of age and bad luck have threatened the farm and soon they expect to be homeless. So, Dorothy goes to OZ to see if she and her family can move to that resplendent address. Ozma agrees and soon Uncle Henry and Auntie Em are whisked to OZ where we are reintroduced yet again to the wonders of this fairly land through their eyes. 

Meanwhile Roquet the Red the Gnome King plots to regain his magic belt, lost to Dorothy several novels back, and so schemes to have his vast forces construct a tunnel to OZ beneath the forbidding desert which separates these two magic territories. He puts his top heel named Guph in charge of the project, and then Guph proceeds to gather allies from other bizarre creatures before the drive toward OZ begins. He travels to the lands of the creepy Whimsies, the creepier Growlywogs, and the even creepier  still Phanfasms. There is much treachery plotted among these groups as they scheme to plunder OZ. They are a baleful group indeed. 

But then the story seems to abruptly turn a third of the way in as Dorothy, Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, the Wizard, and others trot off for a tour of some of the surrounding areas of OZ. They meet up with a cavalcade of strange beings including the Cuttenclips (a paper doll people), the Fuddlecumjigs (a puzzle piece people), the Rigamaroles (an endlessly chattering people), and the Flutterbudgets (a tribe of hypochondriacs). At one point Dorothy and Toto get separated from the rest and has a little excursion her own where she encounters the cutlery people of Untensia, the cake and pastry people of Bunbury, and the civilized bunnies of Bunnybury. (She has to shrink to enter that last one and is escorted by a white rabbit. Sounds a tad familiar.) 

Finally, when they get to the land of the Winkies and meet up with Nick Chopper the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow we return to the main story of the Gnome invasion and the party sets out to return to OZ to confront a seemingly unbeatable enemy, alongside Queen Ozma. 

While I have praise for Baum's inventiveness, it seems a tad strained in this book as he seems to be just going around his house animating the things he sees there with a little help from a certain Mr. Dodgson. Maybe that approach was a source of joy for his readers, but I can't shake the feeling he was intending to sell OZ paper dolls and OZ jigsaw puzzles and OZ pastries to his eager audience. This book marks the end of the second phase of Baum's OZ series, where he was intentionally creating a sequel every year. He seems to have wanted this book to be a finale for the adventures in OZ. But alas it was not to be. 

Baum was busy adapting the OZ story to other media such as the stage and silent movies. He'd be back to writing novels about other fantastical lands, but several years later he'd return with some short tales from the land of OZ collected in Little Wizard Stories of OZ. More on that next time.

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