Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by: L. Frank Baum

 

L. Frank Baum introduces Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz with a message lamenting the fact that children want to hear of more adventures in Oz despite the fact that he has several other stories to tell.  This book at its core was a response to all his readers and he clearly does not want to be writing yet another Oz book.  Like Ozma of Oz before it, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is a book where Oz is the destination and not the journey.  This structure is a double-edged sword for Baum, obviously it falls into the problem of being a formula and sticking so heavily to it making these books seem repetitive structurally.  Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz does feel like this, the structure is episodic with Dorothy, the Wizard of Oz, her cousin Zeb, her cat Eureka, and Zeb’s horse Jim going from danger to danger until Baum decides it’s time to have Ozma bring them all to the Emerald City in Oz for one last adventure involving the justice system and a missing, presumably eaten, piglet before sending Dorothy and Zeb back home.  On the other edge of the sword, it does mean Baum can explore different worlds and things that wouldn’t necessarily fit right within the bounds of Oz that have been set.  The first adventure of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz especially doesn’t quite fit in the idea of Oz, instead being more a subversion for the audience, Baum playing with when the Wizard comes back into the narrative.  It’s notable that this is the strongest sequence in the book as well.  It’s where Baum ties into recent American history, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was fresh in his mind.

 

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is one of those books that fits well into literature at the time.  The earthquake influence has Dorothy and company sent underneath the Earth following clear inspiration from the work of Jules Verne and Lewis Carroll, under the Earth lying the Mangaboos.  Stylistically the falling is A Journey to the Centre of the Earth while it follows the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass logic of talking vegetable people ruling their own society.  Baum does some self-parody here as well with the Sorcerer of the Mangaboos being a humbug like the Wizard, only for the Wizard to appear to live up to the philosophy of being a very good man, but a very bad wizard.  Obviously, there is that retcon of him not having overthrown the original government of Oz and given Ozma to Mombi.  This portrayal of the Wizard is far more jolly, he is kind and does get rewarded in the end for helping Dorothy through her many perils with the chance to be an official court wizard for Ozma.  That is jolly except for when the slices the Sorcerer in half for the reveal that the Mangaboos are vegetable people, a particularly dark twist again coming from the Carroll influence but in a very Baum way.  Baum does not do the typical picking up new companions throughout the novel, instead introducing Dorothy’s cousin Zeb as almost a proto-Eustace Clarence Scrubb.  While I do not know if C.S. Lewis ever read Baum as a child, you can trace a direct line between the characters (Jim the horse also feels like a proto-Strawberry from The Magician’s Nephew).  Zeb isn’t annoying or in need of his eyes being open to the world of magic around him, but he is the normal foil to Dorothy and the Wizard.  The disappointment is that Baum does often forget about him, he is the least interesting character however.  Baum also is excellent at writing a cat.  While the sequence in Oz where Eureka is put on trial could be described as tacked on to make this an Oz book, it is incredibly funny with how Eureka isn’t so much evil, but indifferent, selfish, and caring all at the same time.  Sadly the ending just kind of runs to a word count and Baum wraps things up.

 

Overall, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz sadly lacks a lot of the thematic depth that the three previous Oz books really had.  The middle sequences with the gargoyles, the dragonettes, and the invisible people are all good but they are often just standard children’s adventures.  The most interesting parts of the book are that potential direct line between Verne and Carroll to Lewis, though there isn’t quite enough to say of a direct inspiration.  It’s an easy read and continues the general fairy tale nature of the Oz books, but there is a clear sense of Baum rushing to get things on the page because readers demanded it without quite enough ideas to sustain the novel as well as he could.  7/10.