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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The Road To OZ!

The Road to OZ by L. Frank Baum was published in 1909 and is the darkest of the OZ books to date. With great artwork b John R. Neil this is the fourth trip Dorothy makes to the fairy land of OZ and for her at least it's getting to be rather normal. She's so accustomed to odd happenings that she doesn't think twice about travelling alongside a stranger known only to her and us as "The Shaggy Man". Kudos to the charitable minded Miss Gale, but this is the epitome of "Stranger Danger". But perhaps things were that much different over a century ago when it came to children wandering the byways of the United States. It doesn't help that this "Shaggy Man" purports to have a "Love Magnet" which makes people like him. There are spoilers galore below. 

Accompanied by Toto, who it should be pointed out was cautious about this new character, Dorothy heads down the road and before you know it the party is of course lost, finding themselves in a strange territory where they must choose one of seven routes. That choice leads them to Button Bright, a naive young boy and later to Polychrome, the daughter of the Rainbow. This gang of five enters a hamlet run by foxes where Button Bright gets a new head, that of a fox. Later the Shaggy Man gets the head of a donkey when the group enters a town filled with those critters. 

Then they chance upon a chap called a "Musicker" who is a fellow who makes music all the time with his bodily functions. Sounds nastier than it is. After that they encounter a gang of weird cannibals who want to make soup of them and try to capture them by throwing their own heads at them. Our heroes escape narrowly. They come to a vast desert which separates OZ from the rest of the lands and soon enough have a ship to sail across it thanks to a magic chap named Johnny DooIt who builds at a furious pace. Across the desert they come to the Truth Pond and these magic waters return both Button Bright and the Shaggy Man to their original forms. 

Soon enough they find themselves firmly in OZ and begin to meet old friends and allies such as Tik-Tok, Billina, Nick Chopper, the Scarecrow and others. The gang go to the Emerald City where Ozma informs Dorothy she's been following their adventures and she like them to stay to celebrate her birthday. What follows is a long celebration with an array of characters from past OZ books as well as other books Baum had written such as The Adventures of Santa Claus and John Dough and the Cherub. It's assumed that Baum might've included these characters from less popular books of his to cross promote with the wildly popular OZ books. Eventually the Wizard comes up with durable bubbles which whisk everyone home save for Dorothy who goes once again via Ozma's magic belt. 

This was a strange book. It began with an edge but soon enough tumbled into the same pattern as the previous OZ book, becoming a mere travelogue. Baum introduces characters at a very rapid pace and tight situations get resolved in most cases before anything resembling tension can develop. There's not much plot save that Dorothy gets lost, finds a bunch of new creatures as friends and meets old friends then goes home. Hopefully Baum changes it up some as the series continues. 

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Dorothy And The Wizard Of OZ!

Dorothy and the Wizard in OZ is the fourth installment of the legendary OZ series by L. Frank Baum. And sadly it is easily the weakest installment to date. Published in 1908 this book follows on after the previous year's Ozma of OZ, finding Dorothy in California. In place of Toto and Billina we get Eureka the cat. Dorothy is getting pretty accustomed to weird happenings, so her reactions to the strangeness of the story is muted and we are given a brand-new character to help us experience the shock of the new. 

Dorothy employs a young man named Zeb and his horse Jim to help carry her when they are all fall victim to one of California's notorious earthquakes. But this singular earthquake causes the quartet to fall to deep into the unknown reaches inside the Earth (perhaps) and they find themselves in a land filled with glass houses and light. It is a land of intelligent if inhospitable plant people, called "Mangaboos". Dorothy and Zeb are saved when the Wizard of OZ arrives via his balloon. The gang escape into another land called the Valley of Voe where people are invisible thanks to strange fruits and where they dread deadly bears. The gang escapes this land and heads up Pyramid Mountain to hopefully find the surface of the Earth. Along the way they meet the "Braided Man", a lost salesman of holes (my favorite new character in this story). Next they are threatened by flying wooden gargoyles. Later they find a den of tiny dragons eager to eat them, but they escape that threat as well. They find the surface and are stymied. With no way out the story suddenly shifts gears. 

In an utterly deus ex machina move Ozma of OZ makes a wish on the Gnome King's magic belt and soon all the cast are whisked to OZ where we are treated to a who's who of the last three novels and abundant pageantry. There's a little trouble with Eureka wanting to eat some tiny pigs but that's about all the tension we get save for the horse Jim getting buffeted by the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger when he takes issue with the Wooden Sawhorse. 

If it sounds somewhat random and disjointed, then that would be an accurate description. Our heroes encounter threats because threats are required. Their mission to return to the surface is ultimately a failure but without any cost. The narrative tumbles from event to event and seeks to wow us with oddities. Baum certainly creates strange critters in strange places, but in this case, it lacks the momentum the earlier books demonstrated. On the upside we do find out why OZ is called OZ and how it came to be one country. 

Next time we venture down The Road to OZ. 

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Ozma Of OZ!

Ozma of OZ is the third novel in the ludicrously successful OZ series by L. Frank Baum. First published in 1907, three years after The Marvelous Land of OZ in 1904 and seven years after The Wonderful Wizard of OZ in 1900. This Baum had been reluctant to write additional OZ books, trying instead to write other things, but the amazing success of the first two books showed him that he was foolish to hold off any longer. This novel picks up after the events of the second one and is the first written with the clear intention of creating an ongoing series. 

This novel also reintroduces Dorothy Gale of Kansas back into the mix. While the characters only get to OZ technically at the end of the book, she is swept away to the land of EV. There she encounters first the talking chicken Billina and later the threatening Wheelers, creatures with wheels for hands and feet. Avoiding the latter, Dorothy and Billina find Tik-Tok a clockwork man who requires periodic winding. Soon the trio are brought to the leader of EV who it turns out is a woman who has multiple heads depending on her mood. She is not the real queen of the land, the real queen and her family having been sent into slavery to the Nome King many years before by their mad father and the former king who has since committed suicide. Soon enough an expedition from OZ arrives with Ozma, the new queen of OZ, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion along with a few other like the Hungry Tiger and the living wooden horse. They join forces to find the lost queen and her children and that takes up the last half of the story. 

The Nome King is a duplicitous sort but eventually as everyone suspects our assembled heroes get the best of him and the queen and children are rescued. With EV sorted out they return to OZ, but eventually Dorothy gets homesick and worried about her Uncle Henry and soon she is back home. But we all know more is to come. 

This storyline of this novel and the previous one were combined to create the inspiration for the movie Return to OZ. This movie was not met with the greatest affection when it debuted in 1985. Despite being a Disney project it's a darker take on the OZ landscape than is the famous MGM movie adaptation and that perhaps left audience members cold. But darkness is part of the Baum books. 

Next time we meet another old friend in Dorothy and the Wizard of OZ. 

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The Marvelous Land Of OZ!

The Marvelous Land of OZ was written in 1904. Baum had been busying himself by trying to turn in the original novel The Wizard of OZ into a play and a movie. Eventually he created this sequel specifically with an eye to making it into a stage production and a film. Dorothy Gale is not in this story, rather her place is taken by another innocent young child, albeit on born in OZ to begin with. This is the first of the OZ books to be illustrated by John R. Neill, but not the last as he'd remain with the franchise even after Baum's untimely passing many years later. There is a note appended to the beginning of the book which says that Baum wrote this novel fulfill a promise he made to one little girl. 

Without spoiling too many of the charming turns in this tale let me begin. We meet a boy named Tip who lives with an untrustworthy witch named Mombi. Using some magic powder he brings to life Jack Pumpkinhead, a creature made of wood and a salvaged jack-o-lantern. These two head off to OZ to escape punishment and soon use the powder to bring a sawhorse to life to help them travel. They get to OZ and meet the Scarecrow who is in charge just in time for a revolt by girls led by General Jinjur. Soon enough they head off to get help from Nick Chopper (the Tin Woodman) and before you know it the whole gang head back to OZ, but not before meeting the Woggle-Bug. There are lots more magic and many secrets as they seek yet more help to wrest OZ back from the girls who have put men to doing the housework. 

This is a charming story, filled with wit and lots of fantastical creatures. Perhaps there are in fact a few too many. The traveling troup seems to get quite crowded with at least seven. Pages go by and some don't even speak, especially Tip who gets increasingly overshadowed by the weirder aspects of the story as it unrolls. It he was writing this to supply himself with characters which could be translated to stage and screen, I can imagine why Baum throws so much stuff against the wall. Without the framework of the gray remote Kansas to give it additional zest, OZ feels a little out of focus at times. 

But these are minor quibbles. This ia fun run full of imagination and turns. There are some good secrets if not great ones. This one, like its predecessor would work wonderfully as a nighttime reading. 

Next time it's three years later and Ozma of OZ. 

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The Wonderful Wizard Of OZ!

Although I have heard their praises sung all my long life, I have never read Frank L. Baum's OZ books. For whatever reason I just never got around to it. I grew up in a family that didn't read much, though they endured my passion for comics and science fiction and such, so stories of that kind were not part of my early childhood. And sadly, I never made them a part of the early life of my daughters either. I shared stories with them by the likes of Tolkien, Dahl, Lewis and others, but somehow never Baum. Well I'm using this year to mend that gap in my mind. And I've started by reading The Wonderful Wizard of OZ. 

Like most any American my age, OZ was a part of my childhood, but not by way of Baum's books, but rather by way of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, the movie powerhouse of the first half of the 20th Century and by CBS, the television station that acquired the rights to the movie and began annual showings of the classic musical for many decades. In old timey days when TV offered not one but three whole stations, such events had great charm. But that said, knowing the Judy Garland movie is not knowing the book.

I read the Sea Wolf Press edition which attempts to recreate the effect of the first publications and offers up the tale with the W.W. Denslow artwork intact. It's amazing work which weaves its way through the book and is not limited to the full-page art plates. It's a lovely book and as it turns out a bit of a page turner. Dorothy leaves the ubiquitous gray of Kansas and plops down in OZ within a few pages. Minus the musical numbers the story speeds right along. 

The movie went out of its way to offer up a rational explanation for OZ, with the it's all a dream ending. We are introduced to dopplegangers for many of the people in OZ, but in the novel no such shenanigans. The lunacy of the existence of the Scarecrow with his body of straw which is dispersed making one wonder where his identity resides. Is it in the clothes, the particular straw, or the belief of his friends that he's real. The Tin Man's origin is ghastly, one limb getting chopped until he was no more. Where did his essence exist. 

But in the end Dorothy does get home, though not in quite the same way we've come to know from the movie. And the story stops. Baum never planned a sequel. He never wanted to write a sequel. But four years later he did. 

More on that next time when I read The Marvelous Land of OZ. 

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