Reading The Patchwork Girl of Oz Aloud to My Son

 The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill

This was my favorite of the Oz books as a child, so I approached it with some trepidation. Would my son like it?

Originally published: 1913
Acquired: ???
Previously reread: September 2016
Read aloud: December 2021–January 2022

I think he did; we made pretty rapid progress in it. To me, it recaptures the formula that made the first book work so well: it opens with a child in a difficult status quo, the child loses their parental figure and is forced to go on a journey to get them back, the child picks up a variety of strange companions as they travel, the group works together to overcome difficult problems, the group moves from strange location to strange location. Unlike in some of the mediocre Oz books, there's a clear goal and real tension; unlike in some of the mediocre Oz books, the characters solve their problems by thinking clever.

My main complaint would be with the ending: it's not clear to me why Ozma let Ojo go on his quest at all given that the Wizard can just solve all his problems for him. But one of the benefits of reading aloud is that things like this bother you less, because you're treating the story episodically. Yes, the ending doesn't entirely satisfy... but that's only one chapter out of about thirty. One thing I noticed reading aloud is that Ojo is always re-explaining who he is and what his quest is; something that's very useful when the book is stretched out across weeks to someone with the memory of a three-year-old.

Sometimes I verbally edit the books to fix continuity problems as I read them aloud, but I did not make any changes to this one despite the fact that in Marvelous Land we're told a Doctor Nikidik made the Powder of Life, who is dead according to Road, and here it's a Doctor Pipt who is very much alive. I just didn't care! (And really, it would be the earlier books one should edit.) On the other hand, the characters encounter a magical race called the "Tottenhots"; I edited the name out of my reading, just calling them creatures. Usually I read the Books of Wonder facsimile editions, and the Patchwork Girl facsimile controversially removed some of illustrations of the Tottenhots and revised some of the textual descriptions. However, in this case, I had the Dover, which makes no such changes, so I had to do it myself. (I've been upgrading my Del Rey and Puffin editions to Books of Wonder ones as we read, but the Dovers are almost like the originals except for different covers, and reproducing the color plates in black and white.)

When I finished, my wife asked if Scraps, the "patchwork girl" of the title, actually did anything... the answer is, honestly, not much; she's always there, but the plot driver is Ojo. I don't think Scraps really solves a single problem, though she does prove to be a great friend to Ojo when he is in trouble for stealing the six-leafed clover. But she's a delightful character to read aloud, especially the songs, and I gave her the same voice I gave Pinkie Pie when I used to read the My Little Pony comics aloud to my son. On other hand, this book showed up the limitations of my range of voices, as the Scarecrow and the Shaggy Man share some scenes! (When they are together, I pitch the Scarecrow a little higher, but otherwise they're the same voice.) My wife didn't think the "southern belle" voice I adopted for Bungle, the Glass Cat, was a good choice, but I liked it.