Fairy Tale Spotlight: Toto of Oz [Book Review]

[Spoilers included for a book that nobody reads anymore.]

"Toto of Oz" is the fifty-second book in the Oz series originally created by L. Frank Baum. It was written by Gina Wickwar and published in 2006. My review in short: Not that bad!

I was really unsure what I was going to get here, because this was written by the same author who did "The Hidden Prince of Oz" which was so plastered with too many characters that it ended up making the book annoying to read. Things are a much improved this time around, and I was able to get fairly invested.

The story here is that there is a Gilikin kingdom called Kiltoon that is entirely based around the Scotts. Kilts. Kiltoon. Get it? Their king was about to get married, but suddenly the princess disappears and a warning is left not to look for her or else that person would wander about forever. The royal poet, Sonny Burns, goes on a quest to go find Toto in the hopes that it will cheer up the king who is insufferably miserable and making sure everyone else is miserable with him.

In another part of the story, a kid named Davy from Kentucky ends up being transported to Oz with a horse named Lollipop. Weirdly, the horse can't talk, even in Oz, and this is a fairly important thing to consider in the Oz universe. That usually means a dark enchantment is taking place. Anyways, they get involved.

Lastly, Toto looses his growl again. This happened waaaaaaay back in book #11 "The Lost Princess of Oz." He goes on a quest to find his stolen growl, and along the way he runs into an aristocratic guinea pig named Gladstone who can... sort of randomly... make gold coins appear. Their all Guinea coins. Get it?!

All these plot points come together around a villainous sea fairy named Finna. I have to admit that she was pretty awesome. The writer did a good job at making her both interesting as a character and also very dangerous. She is the kind of woman that just keeps getting in the way. I loved all of the scenes with her in it.

Now, I won't spoil the main plot points, but I do want to say that this story has precisely the same formula that was in "The Hidden Prince of Oz." That said, she fixed all the problems. Although there are a lot of characters that come together for a common goal here, the roster has been cut by more than half. The scenes are far more manageable. The only small problem is that, since I had just read "The Hidden Prince of Oz," I was able to predict nearly everything that would happened in this one extremely early in the reading. If I had read this one first, I would have probably had a better time of it.

There's one last thing I want to point out here just for my own amusement. Once Finna is thwarted in this story, as you might have expected her to be, Dorothy loots the remains. I have not seen Dorothy do this in a very long time, but she has been known to do that in Oz history. It's sort of a weird quirk she has. Thought you might find that funny.

I actually do recommend "Toto of Oz," especially if you avoid "The Hidden Prince of Oz." I am really glad that Toto got his own book. I think it was handled very well. Also don't get this book confused with "Toto of Oz" written by Chris Dulabone in 1986. It is considered non-canonical. Make sure it is authored by Gina Warwick. and you are good to go. Cheers.

This blog was written on September 20, 2023.

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