Fairy Tale Spotlight: Sissajig and Other Surprises [Book Review]

[This blog contains spoilers for a book nobody reads anymore.]

"Sissajig and Other Surprises" is the seventy-fifth and final book in the Oz series originally created by L. Frank Baum. It written by Ruth Plumly Thompson and published in 2003. Much like "The Wizard of Way-Up and Other Wonders," this book similarly features a host of short stories and poems that may or may not have something to do with Oz. And just like last time, I am going to review every last one of them. Alright, let's do this!

*****

"Adventures in Sissajig"

It's the story of Tommy King, a boy from Philadelphia who ends up with a flying handbag that takes him suddenly to the kingdom of Sissajig. Here he ends up being proclaimed king... which would make him King Tommy King.

Everything in Sissajig has a square theme to it. Even their apples are square. They also say the word "a-square" instead of saying "around." Silly stuff like that.

The real problem with Sissajig is not the square thing but simply the fact that everyone is really stupid. They can't seem to do anything without a a king to teach them how things that should be obvious work. And since they tend to go through kings kind of fast, they learn a little more from each king they get along the way. It's a silly system, but I guess it makes sense when all your citizens are morons willing to learn.

I liked this story. It felt like it was a little too short, but I didn't care too much. It was like a really condensed Oz story. Short, silly, and right to the point.

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"Tommy and the Flying Slippers: A New Sissajig Story"

A sequel! That was unexpected, but I guess it's only fair since it's the story that's on the title of the book. At the very least, the sequel is right next to the original. In the last book, they made them the first and last, which was kind of a weird thing to do.

Tommy King is back and randomly finding a pair a magic slippers in his room that take him back to Sissajig. But he doesn't go to the same place. He ends up in a city called Two City where everything is done in twos. Although he also finds an undersea man named Akwa Jack.

Akwa Jack is the real treasure of the story. He is a man who lives underwater, but to live above water he has to wear a bowl over his head filled with water so he can breath. Didn't that happen in some Spongebob Squarepants episode?! Did they read this story or was it just a coincident?! Either way, I like the concept.

Two City was more annoying than fun. Yes, the whole binary thing was cool, but everyone there was mean. This gave me callbacks to the random encounters Ruth always put in her Oz stories. Not good. The rest of the story was alright as it involved saving characters from the first story from a witch. I liked that part.

All in all, this one isn't as good as the first one. It had a lot of the problems that were later found in many of her Oz books. I'd still recommend it though since it's so short.

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"Perhappsy Adventures"

Yes, I know. This title was also in "The Wizard of Way-Up and Other Wonders." But these poems are different than the ones in that book. Also there's more of them. In the first book, there were two, but now we have five entirely new adventures of the fairy creatures called the Perhappsies.

"Perhappsy Fishing" was about how the fairies all tried to go fishing. They did not want to hurt the fish, so they used lollipops instead of hooks. They end up getting dragged down by a big fish into the lair of the mer-people, and then they had a big party. It was a cute poem.

"Perhappsy Fireworks" had to do with a sick boy who had the measles and so could not see the 4th of July fireworks. So the Perhappsy Chaps show up and put on their own fireworks show for him. I've noticed that it is a common thing for Perhappsy's to try and make sad children happy. They certainly aren't from Ireland!

"The Perhappsy Cat" is about a cat with wings that sort of just lives up in the clouds. The thing that made this one unique to Ruth's works was that it referenced an illustration of the cat that was also included in the book. The picture of the cat was absolutely adorable. She even points out that it can sometimes be seen lapping at the Milky Way.

"Bettsy Bell's Halloween" was about a poor little girl who could not come up with the money to get a costume for a Halloween party. She kept teasing her friends about what the costume would look like, but sadly it was not actually going to happen. The Perhappsies show up at the last minute to make a dress for her and even call her Cinderella for good measure. Once again, they seem to help little children with no real interest in getting anything for it. They need to go to Ireland and kick out all the fairies over there.

"The Perhappsies Print the Public Ledger" is the last one. It's similar to the one from the previous book called "The Toys in the Land of Play" with the difference being that they are playing around in a printing press rather than a room full of toys. It was cute, but I consider this one to be my least favorite of the bunch.

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"The Magic Cloak; or, Something New"

The two titles of this one are equally appropriate. It's about a bunch of fairies who dance every night, but the Queen gets bored of it and so wants something new. Unfortunately they can't seem to figure that out. In order to fix the problem, they invent a magic cloak and use it to enchant a little boy named Jack. It shrinks him down to their size and they command him to teach them new things.

What does he teach them? Football. They end up learning how to play football, and for that they love the boy and want to keep them there forever. They go through a lot of trouble to keep him from wishing himself back home, but ultimately he gets away with it.

The story ends with him being able to keep the magic cloak and using it to visit the fairies whenever he wants. I liked it!

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"In Fairyland"

It... um... It was a poem. It was a very pretty poem... I guess. Not sure what it was about, but it sounded okay.

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"Wide Awake and Sleepy Bye"

The Wide Awake Bird comes flying down

From the rosy clouds of Morning Town ---

And he sings and sings about the day ---

'Til all little children get up and play!

The Sleepy Bye Bird comes fluttering down

From the silver towers of Slumber Town.

And he sings and sings of the Wonderful things

In Slumber Town; and he flaps his wings

'Til all little children fall fast asleep ---

And climb in their dreams to his towers steep.

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"The Magic Spectacles"

A king wants to marry out his daughter to a prince, and the rules are that they have to give her a gift. The gift that she likes the most means a winner. A lot of princes give her all kinds of pretty gifts, but none of that really matters.

There are two princes that have their own respective magical spectacles. One of them lets you see all the evil in people and the second prince has spectacles that lets you see all the good in people. She ultimately picks the latter prince because she can see the finer points of all the people surrounding her rather than all the things that make them evil.

This is a good story that deals with cynicism and... well.. a generally better outlook on things. Where it is true a lot of people have bad qualities, that might not be everything that makes them who they are. If we simply think that everyone is bad, then there is no getting along with anyone. You have to find the good in people if it's there. If not, then why even live in public?

It was a thought provoking story, and I liked it.

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"Royal Baking Powder Adventures"

This was actually a set of two long narrative poems that were basically about how cake makes everything better. The cake in question is actually made with "royal baking powder" which I suppose is some sort of a fairy magic ingredient.

"The Little Gingerbread Man, A Royal Time" was about a king whose cook made terrible cake which promoted the same king to make cake illegal. Kinda of a rash decision, in my opinion.

The flour fairies send the famous Gingerbread Man to bring the king special well-made cakes, in an airplane no less, to tempt the king into reversing the law. The cakes seem so nice that he is forced to take the law away, but he also requires that his cook makes cakes the same way the fairies do. It was cute.

"The Comical Cruises of Captain Cooky" is a story about the titular Captain Cooky, a cookie man, who sails to the kingdom of Bombaree, a land in a constate state of war. The belief is that if they just had good cake in their kingdom, they wouldn't fight so much. Apparently they were right, because the plan worked. Imagine stopping a war by feeding everybody cake!

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"The Little Prince and the Faithful Bluebird"

It's a story about a Bluebird that discovers a prince inside a secluded dungeon. She uncovers a plot of an evil queen who put him there so that she could become Queen of the kingdom. The Bluebird travels to his kingdom to try and find anyone who can help the poor prince out.

Without going too much into spoilers here, I want to point out that this story has all the makings of a classically written fairy tale. I was a bit surprised by it. Ruth must have been really inspired when she wrote it. If you can get a copy of just this particular story, it's well-worth the read. It's very exciting and engaging for all three chapters of it.

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"Th Eancie Ntknight!"

Look at that stupid title. Just look at it. This was the worst poem so far. I don't even want you to read it. It's about a knight who makes off with a king's daughter. It's more complicated then that, but I don't care. You see, Ruth wrote a whole poem and then just messed around with the spacing to make it nigh unreadable. Just look at the title and imagine an an entire narrative poem with that done to it. It was crap.

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"Emperor Ching Wow"

I don't mind stuff that is, by today's standards, considered racist, but the problem here is totally different. This is a six chapter story about a lot of wild and magical things happening in China. But the author mixes up China with Japan and even the Middle East. It's all a complete mess. She also turns China into a functioning fairyland. In my opinion, it would have been better to just strip out the nationality and just make all the characters generic fairies. Alternatively, she could have actually bothered to do research about China... which she very likely didn't.

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"The Story of the First Brown-Haired Princess"

Wonderful! In this story, everyone expects a princess to have golden hair, so this particular princess was in disgrace for being born with brown hair. It all works out because there is a king who finds her brown hair beautiful and marries her anyways.

Now, the story itself is very basic, but what was really wonderful was that it was inspired by a letter that Ruth got which was also included in the story itself. This was the cutest letter ever written to a fairy tale author:

"Dear Miss Ruth --- Please write a fairy story for me --- and I want to ask you something: In all the fairy books I have the Princesses always have golden hair. I do wish once they would have a Princess with brown hair!

Marjorie Henderson

"P.S. --- In your story, please, make the Princess have brown hair."

♥THAT WAS THE CUTEST LETTER I EVER READ!♥

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"Ma Kebe Lievetea!"

This is the same stupid concept as with "Th Eancie Ntknight!" where she writes a decent poem but then messed up all the spaces. The poem is actually pronounced "Make Believe Tea" and is about little girls having a pretend tea party. The poem without all the awful editing is actually very good, but sadly, this is the way it was published, so whatever.

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"Land o' Patch"

A cute story about a king that was half fairy and half witch. Half the time he was good and half the time he made evil decisions. There was also this weird rule that if he makes a decree without carrying it out in three days, his kingdom will be destroyed.

So in a fit of rage, one day, he orders the execution of his three sons by specifically calling for them to be beheaded. When he realized what he had done, he immediately regretted it and tried to ask everyone how he could get out of it, but nobody could figure it out. Also his sons were good people and willing to die so that the kingdom would be saved.

However, there was one hilarious wiseman that figured it out. He said that his sons cannot be "bee-headed" because there is no way to make someone have the head of a bee. It worked. Like... the king was in the clear because a wiseman changed the whole context of the sentence. I like the story a lot even though it was stupid.

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"The Two Knights"

A clever poem about two knights which are actually representing day and night constantly battling each other and winning at their appropriate times. When the dark night loses, it's becomes daytime and visa versa.

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"The Pumpkin Witch"

Under the misty moon's pale light

    To the Pumpkin-field stole Bob at night.

        From the vines he pulled the biggest one,

                Then straightened up to cut and run!

                    But --- wow --- a moan, and next a twitch

                        Jerked Bob about to face a witch!!

An awful pumpkin witch!! Down crashed

    The pumpkin to the ground and smashed!!

        The moon went in --- and through the pitch

            And inky dark, changed by the witch

                Ran Bob. A pumpkin without leave,

                    Oh, never take on Halloweve.

                        For lurking in the fields and ditches

                            Are ghosts and spooks and Pumpkin Witches!!

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"The Fairy's Silver Trumpet"

A short story about a fairy princess that everyone wants to marry and are willing to go to war for. She proposes a test to see who is worthy which comes by way of a silver trumpet that nobody can seem to make any sound with. As it turns out, one prince is able to do it by having the fairy princess touch him as he plays, and it works. The story is about how a good woman can make a man even stronger and give him stability. I liked it.

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"Pumperdink Adventures"

Three new Pumperdink stories. I like to imagine that these stories take place in Oz, but the truth is that these were likely written before Ruth placed the kingdom inside of Oz. Even so, it is not unreasonable to consider these stories to be inside of Oz. After all, Pumperdink is actually in Oz now.

"A Story About Dragons" was about a dragon who has to eat coals in order to live, but he was impoverished. He actually goes to the castle at Pumperdink to beg for work so that he could get fed coals to stay alive. As it turns out, dragons make a great furnace, and so he ends up becoming the official furnace of Pumperdink castle. Cute! It, in some ways, resembled "The Reluctant Dragon" in its construction.

"The Laughing King, a Page Out of Pumperdink History" is a funny poem about a king who had decided to abdicate the throne with his prince. The reason he is doing so is because he doesn't exactly know what he is doing there anymore. When asked what he was known for being good at, everyone says he had a good laugh. Not really good enough to be a king, so he buggered off.

"Christmas With the Prince" is about the prince of Pumperdink who had so many possessions that he couldn't think of anything new to ask for for Christmas. As it turns out, he finds that giving things to the less fortunate is actually a sort of gift in itself. I thought this one was cute.

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"Wooden Animals I Have Known"

Two short poems about wooden animals in a land made of wood. The first one was about [The Camel] and the second one was about [The Dragon]. They are both good for basic nursery rhymes. I liked the dragon one more because it was both violent and cute at the same time.

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"The Magic Pipe"

This is a story about a bunny who finds a discarded pipe. When he smokes it, it takes him into a land up in the clouds. He is promptly thanked for returning the pipe which is apparently used to make it rain. He is then shot back down (in the rain) to return to his wife, but with golden shoes he can sell to buy as many carrots as he will ever need.

The thing that makes this short story unique is that she has a talking animal shown as a very normal thing. Usually talking animals is the result of a fairy involvement.  In this case, the rabbit is just a regular person who ends up in a fantastic situation. It was an amusing, little tale.

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"The Tale of a Pink Falmingo"

A narrative poem about a pink flamingo that gets his neck tied in a knot which prevents him from being able to eat. So he goes to a number of birds to get help, but it ends up being an actual sailor that unties it. Honestly this story feels like Ruth had a very silly brain fart when she wrote it down, and I loved it.

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"The Amiable Old Dragon"

Another narrative poem. This one was... kind of shocking and sad. There was an old, friendly dragon who nobody liked because he was scary looking. One day a mermaid shows up and asks him why he is so sad, and he explained that he has no friends. She says that she will be his friend. The dragon is so happy he jumped right into the water to be with the mermaid.

Unfortunately... the way dragons work in Ruth's stories is that they get "put out" by water. So he died. Yep. The author makes a point that... at least he found a friend before it all ended. Why did she write this?

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"Brother and Sister Goose"

A narrative poem about the children of Mother Goose going out into the world to seek wisdom. Instead they just get taken advantage of a lot until they finally find a fairy wiseman to help them out. It's a cute story but kind of random.

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"The Princess of Plumpieland!"

A two-part story about a land made up of very fat people. The princess needs to marry a king, but nobody wants to wed a fat princess. The one guy that does want her, the princess greatly dislikes. This leads to a bomb getting dropped in the middle of town. It comes with a message saying that if she does not marry soon, the kingdom will be destroyed.

That's the main force of the story. I won't spoil the rest of it, but I will say that it wraps up pretty nicely. It is funny that everyone there is fat though. Ruth likes to place very specific themes on her fantasy kingdoms, and that is really the whole point of this one. Without the fat people, it wouldn't be as interesting.

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"Who Can It Be?"

A silly and very simple poem about not knowing who is knocking at the door.

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"The Forgetful Poet"

Three poems apparently written by a forgetful poet. Although I'd rather just call the guy confused.

[A Spring Song] was just a poem with unfinished lines. At the very end, the poet simply gives up. I actually didn't mind this one. It sounded like the guy just couldn't get it together.

[A Winter Night] was a poem where everything was jumbled up such as a roaring and hot cat and a fire taking a nap. That sort of thing. It was funny.

[Moving Day] is just about how annoying it is to move. I didn't care for this one as much. It was a bit too competent to belong to the Forgetful Poet.

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"King, King! Double King!"

Two princes born three minutes apart which makes it hard to tell who the eldest is. But the eldest prince actually just wants to rule the throne with his brother. This story deals with a queer situation where two brothers might rule as one king.

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"The Enchanted Cat"

This is a parable sort of story that is about a wise judge who thought he knew everything about how humans behave. A sorcerer who does not think this to be true transforms him into a cat to teach him how people really are. As it turns out, all the rich and wealthy people he knew treats him like crap, but the poor people in the city are very nice to him. Not a bad story!

I have noticed that in old stories, there are a lot of instances of cats being treated horribly. It doesn't happen quite as much as it used to. Have any of you noticed that?

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"Satiric Verses"

These are six poems about various topics. All are thoughtful and interesting in their own way.

"The Man Without a Hook" was about a man whose wife has so much clothing that he doesn't have anywhere to hang up his own clothing.

"How Long!" was probably about Ruth herself complaining about having to wear pretty gowns and stuff when she preferred to dress more for comfort.

"Positively Off It!" is just a short poem complaining about traveling and how a lot of vehicles take forever to get moving.

"Author! Author!" is actually kind of interesting. It talks about how in comics and drama when people get murdered and such there tend to be an extra edge of drama that comes off as amusing rather than disturbing. Think of how James Bond quips after murdering someone. We don't normally think about this.

"O Sweet Bovinity" is Ruth imagining the very docile life of a cow. Even when they get turned into steak, they don't really understand or care. Kind of a life lived in ignorance.

"Epicurus" -- Despite the name, this poem is about something I think about occasionally. Ever think about all the meat you've eaten and how many whole animals you've gone through in your life? Well, with this poem, Ruth was doing just that.

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"Country Verses"

Three poems that have a relaxing country vibe.

"Happiness" is pretty much what it sounds like. It is a happy poem about happiness.

"The Little Roads" is about the out of the way pathways that we all enjoy walking.

"A Little Red Robin" is a silly poem about just being happy and dancing.

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"A Visit to Jelly Bean Island"

This is a very Oz-like story and similarly in the vane to the Sissajig tales at the beginning of the book. It's about a boy named Fred who gets suddenly transported to a place called Jelly Bean Island. Here they actually grow jelly beans on vines, but they have no one to sell them to. Fred was put here by a Wishing Cat (a cat with wings) to solve the problem.

Basically there is a nearby island with giants living there. Nobody wants to mess with them because they are scary, but the truth was that nobody actually interacted with them either. Fred advises they try and sell the jelly beans to them, which turns out to be exactly what they need to do. Also the giants basically spend all day mining gold that they don't know what to do with, so they just give all of it to Jelly Bean Island for payment. Hilarious.

There are a few things I want to mention here. The Wishing Cat is very similar to the Perhappsy Cat from one of the Perhappsy stories I reviewed earlier in the book. It might be the same one, but it's unclear.

There is an important elephant character in this story that assists Fred with the giants. Her name was Jumbalena, and she is somewhat similar to the Kubumpo character seen in Oz. The characters are different though being that their genders are different. You can tell Ruth just likes elephants though.

Lastly, the ship they take to the giant's island was called the Jenny Jump. This is the name of the lead protagonist of the John R. Neill Oz books. "A Visit to Jelly Bean Island" was published well after John's books were released, so this is obviously a homage to that character. All in all, this was a great fairy tale story.

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"The Sand Man's Desert"

So, some poems speak to me and some don't. This poem gets a very slight pass for me. It's about some sort of fairy sand man living in the desert who has an association with fairy folk. It's just not as good as some of her others, but that's just my opinion. I can see how someone could still like this one.

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"The Bear Who Stayed Up Late"

This was a good one. The story is about a bear cub named Hugabee who refused to hibernate. He also wants to go live with humans and enjoy being awake all winter. A cute bunny named Rufus tries his best to change his mind, but he can't seem to get the bear off of it. Eventually, the bear falls asleep in the snow and some friendly fairy dwarves come and rescue him.

The thing that makes this story so good is how naturally the dialog runs. These characters all sound like real people of their respective ages. The situations also seem to resemble real events. She did a great job with this one. One of her absolute best.

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"The Magic Wishing Sack"

Oh, lookie here. She wrote a play. It's just a one-act play, but it was cute. It's about a small fishing family who get invaded by exactly one pirate named Slim Jim. He plans on taking them all to his ship and force them to work. One of the children claims to have a magic sack that can make anything he wishes for, and he demands it. They explain that, to make it work, he has to put it over his head, and, like an idiot, he does it. They then tie him up and the sheriff takes him away.

My favorite part was when Slim Jim says, "Yo ho ho and a bottle of ---" And then he looks at the audience realizing this is a family production and says, "And a bottle of POP!" Hilarious and cute.

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"Oz Poems"

Oh, good. Finally some Oz content. These are all poems though. I'll go over each of them.

"A Christmas Present for Ozma" is a cute poem about the Scarecrow. He is trying to think of a good present for the fairy ruler of Oz and ends up picking a rocking chair. There is some reference to President Kennedy here, but the point of it was lost to me. Does anyone know what a rocking chair has to do with Kennedy?

"Merry Christmas From Jinnicky" is a simple Christmas greeting from Jinnicky the Red Jinn. He is a character only seen in Ruth's Oz books. He is actually from Ev, but visits Oz a whole lot. There is a lot of controversy about him in the fandom because he keeps black slaves back at home. I actually find him extremely charming though. He has a personality somewhat similar to the genie from Disney's Aladdin.

"A Christmas Wish" is a simple Christmas greeting featuring the Wizard of Oz.

"Where Santa Spends Christmas" was interesting. The poem was about how Santa apparently spends Christmas Day at the Emerald City where everyone gives him presents! That was actually really sweet. Nobody every talks about giving things back to Santa after all of his hard work.

"If, An Oz Verse to be Used for Advertising Purposes" is a surprisingly good poem that is intended to get people interested in reading Oz books. I think this may actually be canon since the Oz books are considered to be written by the Royal Historians of Oz. It makes sense to me! This one was my favorite of the Oz poems.

"The Sawhorse" is a simple poem about the Sawhorse of Oz.

"Famous Jacks - One Who is Some Pumpkins" is the worse one of the bunch. What even is that title? The poem is about Jack Pumpkinhead, but I found it as confusing as its title. This was my least favorite. It was also the last one.

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"A Day in Oz, or, Scraps in Oz"

This is a very fun and silly play written very specifically to promote a couple of official Oz books by Ruth Plumly Thompson. There are two versions of this play that change depending on which book is the one being promoted, and those versions differ significantly, although the songs are the same in both. Yes, this is not just a play, it's a musical.

The story is really just the main characters all coming together in the throne room of Ozma and talking about how fun Oz can be. The songs are about the respective characters and are all very good, although I wish I could have heard them set to music. It's all poetry to me.

The thing that really surprised me was that, on the very day I read this, I was talking to my friends about how in canon Oz nobody ever actually holds one of the Oz books in their possession. Literally that night, I read this play and they were holding the books in their hands for the audience to see. Now one can argue that it can't really be canon because this was a play intended to promote the books, but I don't care about that. This whole book is considered canon, so I still think it was a very shocking coincident.

Both versions of this play are good. One version focuses on Scraps, and the other one on Jack Pumpkinhead and shockingly the former king of Oz, Pastoria who is literally Ozma's dad. This was a fun read, and I would totally go see this play even if it is just intended to sell books. There was enough love put into it to warrant a viewing.

*****

With the completion of this book, I have read all seventy-five books in the Oz series. And this last one gets an easy recommendation from me. It was even more fun than the previous one, and a great one to end the series on. I loved it.

Is this the end? Is that all? Am I entirely done with Oz?! Well... no. There's a little more. Just a little. Some tiny little left-overs that I need to deal with before I can say the journey is 100% complete. But as for the books themselves, I have read them all. Stay tuned to this blog to see what else I come up with. I promise to keep it all interesting. Thanks!

This blog was written on March 18, 2023.

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