Just Finished Reading Two More Oz Books by L. Frank Baum

Although the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz...along with the soulful version called The Wiz from 1978...are what most people think of when the Wizard of Oz comes to mind, original creator and author L. Frank Baum actually wrote a long series of books based on this imaginary land of wonder and magic.  I just read the third and fourth books, titled Ozma of Oz and Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz respectively, written in the years 1907-08.  That latter title probably confused a few people due to its similarity with the more well-known original story.  In Ozma of Oz, Dorothy is on a ship with her Uncle Harry to visit Australia where some of his relatives live, but the visit is more intended to improve his flagging health than anything.  One turbulent night she goes up on deck fearing her father had gone there and was in danger...only to get thrown overboard herself.  A chicken crate also meets the same fate, and fortunately for Dorothy she finds it suitable as a raft...and there is a surviving hen as well to accompany her to their shared destination as they float on the open sea.  Then the hen begins to speak, indicating that they had entered a area where magic prevails.  They wash up on a shore where she uncovers a mechanical man called Tic-Toc.  They are now in the land of Ev...and it turns out to be just across the desert from Oz, now ruled by the girl queen Ozma.  Subsequently, Dorothy, Billina...as she names the hen...and Tic-Toc embark on an adventure to rescue the rightful rulers of Ev from the Gnome King, with all sorts of sidetracks and strange creatures along the way.  In the next book, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, you can correctly assume that our heroine survived her previous perils and is now in a new adventure.  This time, she and Uncle Henry have just returned to the States and are staying a bit in California.  While being driven in a coach with her cat Eureka by a boy named Zeb and pulled by Jim, the horse, a severe earthquake opens up the ground beneath them and they plunge into the depths below.  By the time they are near the Earth's center they have slowed down and soft-land in a strange place where all life is plant-based. Not much later a familiar figure lands there, too: the Wizard of Oz, now working in a circus as a balloonist and also caught up in the quake.  Before long they all realize they'd better escape for their lives...the novel jumps from one underground setting to another, each with its own special "people"...some benevolent and some extremely dangerous.   And yes, there is a connection in all this with the kingdom of Oz, which the book reveals toward the end.  And, naturally, the moment they descend from the earthquake low enough to be in "magical" space, the cat Eureka and horse Jim begin to speak and reveal their own individual, quirky personalities...

These Oz tales are very whimsical, funny, and cute...they remind me of C.S. Lewis with his Chronicles of Narnia series, but without the religious analogies.  I wonder if Lewis got some of his inspiration for it from Baum, who wrote his series some thirty-to-fifty years earlier.  I plan to continue reading the books in the series all the way through the fourteenth and final one...