Fairy Tale Spotlight: Ruth Plumly Thompson - Author of Oz

Ruth Plumly Thomson is the 2nd author to work on the famous Oz books started by L. Frank Baum. Her Oz books ran from 1921 to 1939, and then there were two more in 1972 and 1976. She wrote a total of twenty-one of them, the last two being much later in her life. (I haven't read those yet.) Along the way she added a lot of new characters to the universe and the world of Oz expanded quite a bit after Baum passed on. But was she actually as good as Baum, the same as him, or was she out right terrible?

It wouldn't be right to say that Ruth was terrible. There are quite a few of her books which were quite wonderful. But, sad to say, the bulk of her collection tends to be very similar to one another. The scenario runs about like this: Once the threat or problem has been established, one or more characters goes on a journey. Along the way, they run into areas of Oz nobody has ever seen before (and will never be seen again). This area has a theme to it such as "Everyone must always be hopping." In this example, the characters aren't doing what everyone in this location is doing (such as hopping all the time.) This makes the heroes illegal, and they are either imprisoned or threatened with some sort of forced transformation to make them more like the locals. This happens over and over again until they finally get to where they wanna go and then the main plot continues from there.

The above example is sadly the way most of her stories ran, and it was a pain to read for most of the time, However, towards the middle of the 1930's her books began to change format. The randomly themed locations greatly took up less of the book, if at all. The characters personal drives became paramount, and the missions they got involved with were rather engaging. I found myself genuinely interested in what was going to happen.

Towards the very end of the 30's, she falls back into her original habits, and the stories become much more formulaic. This was a big downer for me. I wasn't sure why it happened. Perhaps, it was too much for the children of the time, or the publishers pressured her to do so. Either way, I was left feeling kind of disappointed.

Another issue I took with her was how patronizing she was to children. Baum never did that. He would go out of his way to explain everything in a very straight-forward manner. Ruth would often have silly explanations or no explanation at all. It could sometimes get frustrating.

I personally think, on the whole, Baum was simply a better writer when it came to the Oz books. Ruth did do good though. There were a number of wonderful characters that came about within her canon. My favorite shall always be Sir Hokus of Pokes who very much served as the local Don Quixote of the series. Either way, I think the originals take the prize.

I read these books so you don't have to. If you want the grand Oz experience, you only need to read the ones by Baum. The other ones are out there for those of us who obsess over these sorts of things. I have no regrets. I am ready to move on to the next great author of Oz! (Although I hear he did a terrible job.)

This blog was written on February 21, 2022.

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