Written posthumously, based on Baum’s notes, but definitely not as good as the author’s work. ( )

Picture book for older readers #2

With this, my three-year-old son and I came to the end of L. Frank Baum's contributions to the Oz mythos. This was his fourteenth and final Oz novel, which we read about eleven months after we started back with Wonderful Wizard (though as we've taken a couple detours on the way, this was our eighteenth Oz book together).

Like many of the late novels, I remembered little of it, but I did remember the Flatheads and the Skeezers. These are two warring tribes in the Gillikin Country: the Flatheads' heads stop at their brows, so they have to carry their brains around in cans, while the Skeezers live in a great domed city that can be submerged in a lake. Beyond this and a scene that appears on the cover of the Del Rey edition, though, I remembered little of it.

Like a lot of the later Baum books, I don't think it's a favorite, but I did enjoy it. It's distinctly a novel of two halves. The first half could actually be called Ozma of Oz, except that we already had that book, for it's the book that focuses on the princess of Oz more than any other of the original fourteen. Ozma isn't really the protagonist of any of the Oz books after her transformation from Tip, not even the one called Ozma of Oz, but here she's the co-protagonist with Dorothy. Emerald City established Ozma's pacifist ethos, and this novel explores that in detail, along with what it means for Ozma to be a fairy. (I think Scarecrow was the first book to call Ozma a fairy, something not very consistent with the backstory she received in Marvelous Land or Dorothy and the Wizard.)

Anyway, when Ozma hears about the war between the Skeezers and the Flatheads, she's determined to stop it—but to stop it by showing the Skeezers and the Flatheads a better way to behave, not by using force or anything. We also get an explanation from Ozma of how her fairy magic differs from the sorecery of Glinda and the wizardry of the Wizard: fairy magic is innate and doesn't need tools (though Ozma's magic wand seems to help), while sorcery and wizardry are more powerful but require learning and tools to implement. There's some good problem-solving by Ozma and Dorothy, too. Ozma is ultimately ineffectual in stopping the war, though, despite her pleas; and she and Dorothy ends up trapped in the underwater city of the Skeezers.

The second half of the book, then, shifts focus to Glinda, along with a subplot about a Skeezer named Ervic trying to disenchant some fish. Glinda makes a rescue party: she needs to raise the submerged city, and we see her and the Wizard trying various means of doing this, and we see how their magic is more mechanical than that of Ozma. Though Glinda is well-organized, she's actually not very effectual, either; Scraps has the key idea that enables them to get into the city, Ervic cleverly tricks a Yookoohoo into disenchanting the fish (revealing them to be Adepts at Magic), and Dorothy figures out the magic word that operates the city. It's not a very high-stakes novel; another writer might impose some kind of deadline on raising the city, but Baum goes to great pains to establish that no one is in any danger! It actually has the feel of some Golden Age science fiction to me, a group of competent people working together to reason their way through a problem. So like Magic of Oz, I enjoyed read it on a chapter to chapter basis even if ultimately it kind of doesn't add up to much as you feel it might.

A large number of characters go with Glinda to help raise the Skeezer city, but unlike in some of his other books, Baum is less effective at giving them all something to do. Button-Bright has a nice scene of getting lost and told off by Glinda, but the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, Professor Woggle-Bug, the Shaggy Man, Uncle Henry, Cap'n Bill and Trot, the Glass Cat, and Betsy Bobbin are all there too, and most of them just fill out crowd scenes. It's nice for Baum to get so many favorite characters into his last novel, but I wish some of them had even got just one scene where they did something.

Like Magic, this felt influenced by the Great War then recently concluded: Ozma has to stop a war between two nations who have been usurped by dictators, a war their citizens don't want. Because of this, I used German accents for most of the Flatheads, and French for most of the Skeezers.

My son seemed to enjoy this one, though he was a bit worried that the submerged city wouldn't be raised. He even drew his own picture of the Skeezer and Flathead cities, but unfortunately I can't find it to scan it. I do have this picture of Ozma's palace in the Emerald City that he drew.

More on what he drew, what he thought, and the experience of reading the Baum books overall on my blog.

L. Frank Baum is an author I have read many times since I first discovered him in second grade. I find that his books stand up to the test of time and they are books that I enjoy re-reading. Some of them are stronger than others but as a whole I quite enjoy both the stories and characters. ( )

I have grown so fond of these books. Spoiler: I loved at the end that the Flatheads had their brains reinstalled by Glinda and weren't flat on top any more. ( )