The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R.
Neill
This novel unites Baum's Trot and Cap'n Bill books with his Oz ones by bringing those two characters (along with Button-Bright) to live in Oz. The writers of the late, lamented Oz blog Burzee were skeptical of what Baum claims in his foreword, that his readers wanted him to bring Trot and Cap'n Bill to Oz, but going on the sample of my three-year-old son, it's entirely believable; he'd been campaigning for it since we read The Sea Fairies, and continued to campaign for it throughout this book. "When are they going to get to Oz???" he'd plaintively ask about once a chapter.
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| Originally published: 1915 Acquired and read aloud: March 2022 |
This is the one of Baum's original fourteen Oz novels that I remembered the least about going into it. Beyond the fact that Trot and Cap'n Bill and Button-Bright made it to Oz in the end, I could have told you literally nothing about it. While I remember many of the early novels in exhaustive detail, everything from this point on is a bit murkier, yet for each novel I could give you some capsule plot... except this one. All of the places they visited were totally new to me; the adventure the characters had with the Scarecrow in Jinxland upon finally getting to Oz did not strike a single chord of memory.
It's a bit surprising because though I don't think it would ever be a favorite, it has some fun bits. The subterranean explorations that open the novel are well done, the visit to Pessim's island is entertaining, Cap'n Bill comes across better than ever. Back in Sea Fairies, he was very skeptical about magic; now he comes across as very practical about it. It's him who comes up with many of the characters' best plans, applying down-to-earth problem-solving skills to extraordinary situations. My son was particularly taken with the trip to Mo (Baum once again crossing over with one of his other fantasies, in this case The Magical Monarch of Mo) where it rains lemonade and snows popcorn, and while taking a car ride during this book we spent some time imagining what all the other kinds of Mo weather could embody. I don't remember having much of an opinion of Button-Bright as a child, but I find him highly entertaining now, and I think Scarecrow is the best depiction in the series of his almost supernatural ability to get lost. (It does seem a shame after how big a deal was made over his Magic Umbrella in Sky Island, that he just loses it between books here!)
One thing I appreciated is that I felt like it had more illustrations than Tik-Tok of Oz, where they had seemed somewhat sparse, with many pages passing with no visuals. Scarecrow of Oz constantly had something of visual interest to look at.
On the other hand, for a book called The Scarecrow of Oz, it really does not show off the Scarecrow at his best. Do his brains solve the crisis in Jinxland? No, not at all. It's just luck! A bit disappointing; Baum often seemed to forget in the later books to actually show the Scarecrow being smart!
My son seemed to like it on the whole. During the sequence where the Scarecrow was threatened with burning, though, he hid under his covers. It's interesting; sequences of physical danger didn't seem to affect him much in the earlier books, but as we go on and his understanding of the stories is growing, they can scare him more and more. On the other hand, what is disturbing to an adult is something he just doesn't get. In this one, we learn that since people in Oz live forever, if you dispose of an old king by throwing him into a lake and dropping stones on him, he's just down there forever!
My son was taken by the Ork, the bird with a propeller for a tail:
During the time period we were reading this, at one point we were playing and my son turned to me and said, "Dad, why do we live in Florida?" "What do you mean?" I asked cautiously, not really wanting to explain the academic job market. "Why don't we live in Oz?"
Good question.
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