First Few Oz Books and Ozma Thoughts

Sam and I have continued to read through the Oz book series this summer. It's fun to read the books in the order in which they were published; when I was a kid, I had to read whatever book happened to be available at the library. I feel like I'm now understanding the chronology for the first time (even though, really, these stories can stand on their own without successive reading). We just started the fifth book, The Road to Oz, tonight. I'm excited to read this book, because I remember really liking some of the characters who are introduced, like the Shaggy Man (with his Love Magnet) and Polychrome (the Rainbow's daughter). Here is a brief breakdown of the new characters/events/places in the books we just read, just so I can keep them straight in the future:

• The Wizard of Oz (Book #1): Much of plot similar to films (but why doesn't Toto talk?). Silver shoes, field mice (and Queen of the Field Mice) help get Cowardly Lion out of the deadly poppy field, Wicked Witch has a magic cap that forces the Winged Monkeys to do her bidding, Land of Munchkins = blue; Land of Winkies = yellow, Land of Gillikins = purple, Land of Quadlings = red. Emerald City = green, only because of green spectacles. Glinda releases Winged Monkeys when she becomes owner of cap.
• The Marvelous Land of Oz (Book #2): First set in Land of Gillikins = purple. Tip, Mombi, Powder of Life, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, General Jinjur and the female Army of Revolt (with their knitting needles), the Gump, Scarecrow stuffed with money from the jackdaw's nest, field mice hide inside the Scarecrow, Tip --> Ozma,
• Ozma of Oz (Book #3): Dorothy caught in a storm on a boat to Australia, Land of Ev, Wheelers, Tik-Tok, the vain Princess Langwidere with her thirty interchangeable heads, Nomes and Nome King, the Magic Belt, Hungry Tiger, Billina
• Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Book #4): Earthquake in California, Dorothy and Zeb fall into the middle of the earth, Jim the Cab Horse, Eureka the Cat, the Nine Tiny Piglets, the Mangaboos (vegetable people), invisible people with invisible bears, the Braided Man who sells flutters and rustles, Gargoyles, Dragonettes

I think I will also especially like this fifth book we just started, because I didn't really like the previous book in the series, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, very much this time around. The characters are only in Oz for the last 1/3 of the book and the ending is rather abrupt. There is less cohesion in terms of plot, too. Although the main idea is to make it back home, there is less motivation for characters since the Wizard is content to remain in Oz. Eureka and Jim the Cab Horse are also not very friendly or considerate animal companions, which make them less endearing than Billina or the Hungry Tiger.

Baum doesn't stick with his own mythology either, which is something that Peter Glassman points out in the afterward (p. 262). In the second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, it is explained that the Wizard took part in the abduction of Ozma, in order to ensure his power over the Land of Oz. In turn, Ozma was enchanted and turned into the boy Tip by a witch named Mombi. The Wizard is not villanized at all when he returns as a character in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and the history is tweaked so that Ozma's father and grandfather were imprisoned by Mombi. There are less illustrations than the previous books too (which is hard when you are reading to a child!), and I also personally don't like the illustrator John Neill's shift to watercolor illustrations from the colored prints in the previous books.

Nonetheless, Sam and I are enjoying the series. It's our special thing to read chapters together and talk about the characters at various points during the day. Sam told me earlier today that he doesn't want to read the final book in our series, because that means that the Oz stories will be over. I told him that we could make up our own Oz stories after that point, or we can start over and read the books again. (Then I also want to introduce him to other books like The Phantom Tollbooth, too).

At the park earlier today, he started to play with some of the other kids on the playset. The girls were pretending something, and Sam tried to participate by pretending to be Oz characters. Within fifteen minutes he shifted from being Gargoyles (the silent wooden creatures in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz who have detachable wooden wings and hate sound), to Jack Pumpkinhead (The Marvelous Land of Oz), to a Nome (Ozma of Oz), to the Nome King, to the Tin Woodman (who he explained to his peers is also called "Nick Chopper"). The girls had no idea what Sam was doing, but they tried to go with the flow. One girl seemed confused, though, when Sam was pretending to be Jack Pumpkinhead and complained that his head had fallen off!

As I've been reading these books, I've had a reoccurring regret: Why didn't I dress up as Ozma for Halloween when I was a kid? When I was younger, I always thought that Ozma looked really beautiful in the film Return to Oz. I wonder why I never wanted to dress up like her. That crown with the O-Z! And the romantic blossoms on the sides of her head! And her flowing gowns! Maybe if I had appreciated Art Nouveau back then, I would have wanted to emulate Ozma's aesthetic a bit more.