Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Wonder City of Oz [Book Review]

[Contains spoilers for a book nobody reads anymore.]

All right! Let's do this!

"The Wonder City of Oz" is the thirty-forth book in the Oz series originally created by L. Frank Baum. It is the first to be written by John R. Neill, best known for being the series illustrator since the second book. This book was published back in 1940.

The story tells about a girl named Jenny Jump from New Jersey who encounters a leprechaun. After briefly capturing it, she persuades the leprechaun to give her fairy powers, which he does. She has the ability to see fairy things, but must impressive is her ability to stomp her foot and jump as high and far as she wishes to. In fact, she manages to jump all the way to Oz.

The celebrities of Oz are able to predict her arrival, but they are also able to predict her bad temperament. Jenny has a bad temper, which drives her to do some rather rough stuff in the story, as well as bully a Munchkin boy named Number Nine for most of the book.

The story deals with a number of plotlines:

1. Jenny persuades Ozma to hold an "ozlection" to see if they will vote for Ozma again or for Jenny who also wants to be queen.

2. Jenny finds a turn-style that can actually create new clothing styles, and so opens a style shop in the Emerald City.

3. After some misadventures in one of the Ozoplanes from the previous book, Jenny finds out that some giant chocolate soldiers are planning to invade Oz, and so she has to try and warn Ozma of the coming danger.

4. Towards the end of the book, Jenny throws a tantrum and lets all the animals in the zoo loose, which the people of Oz have to work together to round up.

5. There are a number of other plotlines mixed into this book, but I chose to mention the big ones. This book is a mixed bag full of ideas but are assembled in a somewhat undisciplined way.

Let's talk about what this book does right and what it does wrong. The five main countries in Oz have a particular color associated with them. For example: The Munchkin country prefer the color blue, the Emerald City likes the color green, and the Winkies like the color yellow. It had always been more of a preference for them, like as to the color they paint their houses and their clothing. But John went all out and had anything and everything from a region have their respective color: the trees, the water, the grass, and even the skin color of the natives. This is not only in stark contract to the earlier 33 books, but there is no way John could NOT have misunderstood it... because he was the illustrator that whole time. It's a terrible idea, and I don't like it at all.

Another thing that almost made me hate the book was the large amount of wacky, random nonsense that occurred throughout the book. Everything was alive. All inanimate objects were living breathing people, even the very houses you lived in. Even conceptual things such as musical notes and sound had a physical presence, giving you the ability to pluck the musical notes out of the air and reutilize them somehow. I spent the first several chapters of the book, not only frustrated, but angry. But then something hit me.

Have a look at the cover of this book down below. What does it look like to you? If you thought an old cartoon, then you'd be right. It is modeled after the popular cartoons of the era, and this story is an actual written narrative of a then modern cartoon. And once I realized what was going on, I started having fun. A LOT of fun. It was like I was watching an old bouncing Betty Boop style cartoon in my head while I read the story. That's never happened before, and dear Lord, I had a blast!

And there is no denying that this heavily breaks the canon of the older books, but I didn't care. I fell head over heels for the stylization of it. It was fun, humorous, and ever so clever. Neill did a great job at this, and it made me wish the cartoon was real.

The title of the book itself was an unfortunate mistake. When I first saw the title, I assumed that some characters were going to go traveling and find this new city. Unfortunately, the "Wonder City" only refers to the Emerald City itself. It was a lost opportunity to call the book "The Emerald City of Oz." That would have been a far more appropriate title. The whole book is about that city.

Apparently the "ozlection" plotline was not even written by Neill at all. It was added in by the publishers because they didn't think his book was interesting enough. I know that sounds really shitty, and it is, but it doesn't really hurt the story. I did find myself super interested in the whole event. I do wish the publishers had minded their own business though. I am more than ever convinced that Ruth Plumly Thompson was having problems in her latter stories after hearing about this.

There is a very controversial thing that happens at the very end of the book. Although Jenny does a lot of good in the story, nobody really appreciates her temper. I didn't mind it. I thought her temper was a lot of fun and gave her a very unique personality, but Ozma and the Wizard thought to cure her of it... and so... they basically... lobotomize her at the end. They do it in a sort of magical way, removing her temper, her envy, and her... ambition. Yes, that too.

All that was left was a happy, sweet girl who would be allowed to stay in Oz forever. She would always be happy and she would skip and frolic everywhere she went. You know, as it turns out, lobotomies were just beginning to get popular around the time this book came out. It kind of makes you think, doesn't it? It just makes me wonder though. What the heck has Oz become?

Listen to me when I say this: I loved this book. It's not a perfect book, but it is entertaining as hell. I couldn't put it down. There's something so uncanny about it, something so... broken, but in just the right ways to fascinate the mind. I'm not sure if it was entirely a good thing, but whatever the case may be, "The Wonder City of Oz" stands out as one of the most original and strangest Oz books ever written. I do recommend it!

This blog was written on April 13, 2022.

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