Reading Tik-Tok of Oz Aloud to My Son... and He Devises His Own Oz Book!

Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill

Tik-Tok of Oz is an odd book, though I knew none of it when I was a child. Baum adapted Ozma of Oz into a stage musical, just as he had Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land. But the stage rights to any characters who appeared in those musicals still belonged to those musicals' producers, so the new musical couldn't feature any of those characters. Thus, while Ozma of Oz is about Dorothy and her pet chicken Billina washing up on the shores of a land near Oz after a shipwreck, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz is about Betsy Bobbin and her pet mule Hank washing up on the shores of a land near Oz after a shipwreck. Princess Ozma of Oz's army of many officers and one private becomes Queen Ann of Ooogaboo's army of many officers and one private. Ozma herself, though, becomes Ozga the Rose Princess. The Shaggy Man and Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter (from Road to Oz) are added to flesh out the cast of characters; in Ozma of Oz, the characters seek to liberate the Royal Family of Ev from captivity by the Nome King, while here the Nome King holds the Shaggy Man's brother as prisoner. Dorothy finds Tik-Tok abandoned in a cave; Betsy finds Tik-Tok abandoned at the bottom of a well. Plus one incident from Dorothy and the Wizard is adapted as well.

Originally published: 1914
Acquired and read aloud: January 2022

The resulting musical was evidently different enough that Baum, always looking to take shortcuts while writing, adapted it back into a novel! Yes there are quite a lot of similarities to Ozma of Oz... but I actually don't think I noticed as a kid! What I did notice was that the Shaggy Man clearly meets Polychrome for the first time here, even though the two were travelling companions in Road. As I sometimes do, I edited it while reading it aloud to my son to make it clear that they did know each other. (Beside, the whole meeting scene is a set-up for a torturous bow/beau pun that would have gone right over his head.)

That said, as a kid it never was one of my favorites. I might blame the fact that it's one of two Oz books where my edition was an illustration-less Puffin Classic, but I didn't get much more out of it this time around. It has its moments: I like Queen Ann, especially at first, the Nome King and Kaliko are always fun.

But on the other hand, it has a lot of characters who don't do anything; I imagine Ozga and Private Files had some romantic duets on stage, but here they just stand around. Even more unfortunately, Tik-Tok is barely in it. I'd guess he made a great spectacle on stage, but again, he's just here most of the time. The main characters don't really do anything to defeat the Nome King; it's Quox the dragon sent by Tititi-Hoochoo who does all the work there. Betsy is pretty much a nonentity compared to Baum's other child protagonists like Dorothy and Trot and Ojo.

(Betsy knows what Oz is and that Dorothy is a princess there, indicating she must have read the Oz books. This fits with the conceit Baum introduced a couple books back, most notably Emerald City, that he was an historian receiving updated from a real place that he published in book form. However, Betsy doesn't know who the Nome King or Shaggy Man are... yet the only two books where Dorothy is a princess already are Emerald City and Patchwork Girl, and the Nome King appeared in the former and the Shaggy Man the latter!)  

For the first time, my son expressed some aesthetic opinions on an Oz book. After the first couple chapters, all about Queen Ann wanting to conquer things, he told me he didn't want them to conquer anything. He doesn't like things to be broken! And once it was over he actually said it wasn't his favorite Oz book!

And yet... after we finished, he had a brief period of wanting to make his own Oz book, and he drew pictures for it, and enlisted me and Hayley to do it too. What was this Oz book called? Hank of Oz! Inspired by the recent Sea Fairies, we had to draw Hank underwater, and inspired by the next book we went on to, Sky Island, we had to draw Hank flying in the sky. So it seems the book made a positive impression after all...

Hayley's cover for Hank the Mermule of Oz, definitely the best of the lot.

My cover for Hank above Oz, where I messed up by first doing the overlapping "OZ" element, then Hank's balloon, meaning it looks like "ZO" from a distance. Also pictured: a sky island, a sky snake, Button-Bright on his Magic Umbrella, and some kind of wizard tower.

My son's three "Hank in Oz" images, with some explanatory captions from me. The first is "Hank in the sky" (I think the "putter-inner" is what put Hank in the air-ship?), the second "Hank underwater,"and the last is just "Hank outside." Definitely a master of drawing mules!