Reading The Giant Horse of Oz Aloud to My Son

The Giant Horse of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill

Say what you will about Ruth Plumly Thompson, but she was a writer who knew what kids liked. To whit: the title character of this book is honestly not all that important to the plot, but he is memorable. A horse big enough for five people to sit on comfortably (even when one is a giant statue), whose legs can extend telescopically, and who has an umbrella for a tail. Every time High Boy did something, my four-year-old son was delighted. High Boy, like the best Oz animal characters, has a strong sense of personality, too: conceited and impatient but determined and loyal. He feels like a horse. (Was Thompson big on horses? She has one more book with a title horse, The Wishing Horse of Oz, and I recall there's also a significant horse character in The Silver Princess in Oz. On the other hand, she never seemed all that interested in the Sawhorse.)

Originally published: 1928
Acquired: August 2022
Read aloud: August–September 2022

In this book, Thompson is clearly taken by a question that has bedeviled me: whatever happened to the Good Witch of the North? The first Oz inhabitant Dorothy ever met got a couple cursory mentions across the subsequent five books, and then was promptly never mentioned again, even though she was the ruler of the Gillikin country. Similarly, there was a Munchkin ruler mentioned in a couple early Oz books, who also faded away. So what was going on in those countries?

Thompson provides answers, even if those answers don't always make sense with what came before. As I said in my linked post above, books after Emerald City circumstantially indicate there just must not be a Good Witch of the North anymore, as she is never included among the list of permitted practitioners of magic, and the Gillikin country is often indicated to have no ruler. But this book makes it clear that the Good Witch of the North (here named "Tattypoo") has been ruling the Gillikins and practicing magic all along... just unmentioned, I guess. Similarly, Thompson tells a story of the disappearance of the King of the Munchkins, and the isolation of the Munchkin capital, Sapphire City, but sets these incidents twenty-five years prior, before the events of Wonderful Wizard, so this can't be the Munchkin king mentioned in early Oz novels.

Does this matter, though? Not really, I think. Sure, if you are like me, and want to write a political history of Oz, Thompson doesn't make it easy. But if you are my son and want an entertaining Oz adventure—or even if you are me, and try to just take each book as its own experience—then the answers Thompson provides are satisfying on their own merits... mostly. I liked the look we got into the Good Witch of the North. She lives in Mombi's old cottage (though this must be a different cottage than the one we saw in Marvelous Land) with a friendly dragon and a two-tailed cat. Yes, she rules the Gillikins, but this mostly seems to be in an advisory way: people come to her for help, and she helps them. The chapter told from her point of view is an intriguing one. My main objection is that "Tattypoo" is a terrible, terrible name! When reading it aloud, I substituted "Locasta," the name Baum gave the character in the Wizard of Oz stageplay, but which never made its way back into the books. I only slipped up once, I think! My son seemed to really like the little dragon and the two-tailed cat.

Similarly, I always like Thompson's take on Mombi, and even though Mombi is dead in this book, she casts a long shadow. (Though you may recall that when I read Lost King aloud, I edited it so that Mombi was dunked in the Fountain of Oblivion and lost her memory. Thus, whenever someone in this book said, "oh we can't ask Mombi what she did because she's dead," I had to change it to, "oh we can't ask Mombi what she did because she's forgotten all her wickedness.") Mombi fell in love with the Cheeriobed, prince of the Munchkins; when he refused to marry her and instead married Orin, a minor Gillikin princess, Mombi took her revenge by destroying Cheeriobed's father and kidnapping Queen Orin and isolating the Sapphire City with use of a sea serpent with the head of a dragon and the body of a fear fish. Thus, by the present day, no one knows about Sapphire City or the Ozure Isles on which it stands in Lake Orizon. It's an evocative location, and gives enormous power to Mombi. (Thompson doesn't say this, but I like to think Mombi had political motives for all this, too; perhaps she was helping her ally the Wicked Witch of the East by deposing a source of resistance to her rule of the Munchkins. Someday I want to write Mombi of Oz and weave all of Baum's and Thompson's hints into a coherent history.)

So we learn some neat stuff about the rulers of both the Gillikins and the Munchkins. What works less well for me is the way it is all tied together at the end. It turns out that when Mombi kidnapped Orin, she tried to turn her into a wicked witch. Like... why? We know Mombi likes transformations, but even a wicked witch would be a rival, I would think! She couldn't turn Orin wicked, though, so though Orin became an old woman, she became a good witch... Tattypoo. Without her memory, Tattypoo eventually defeats Mombi and takes over the Gillikin country, and then at the end of this book, is disenchanted and becomes Orin again. So having set up Tattypoo as an interesting character, Thompson promptly takes her out of play permanently! I guess if anyone ever wrote an Oz novel set before this one, they would have this set-up to work with, but I find it disappointing to create an interesting character, and then replace her with a less interesting one. (Something I've seen Thompson accused of before, in Kabumpo and Grampa, but this is the first time I've agreed.)

This does mean Ozma needs to appoint a new ruler for the Gillikins; she somewhat inexplicably promotes Joe King, ruler of Up Town, to be in charge of the entire country. She's never even met him, only his horse! She also confirms Cheeriobed as ruler of the Munchkins, which makes a bit more sense.

As for the rest of the book, it's pretty solid. What kicks the whole thing off is that Quiberon the sea serpent decides he wants a mortal maiden to tend to him, so Akbad the soothsayer uses some magic wings to fly to the Emerald City, where he kidnaps Trot. Meanwhile, Prince Philador of the Ozure Isles goes on a quest for the Good Witch of the North, reasoning that since she defeated Mombi before, she can do it again. So Trot and the Scarecrow have to escape from the Ozure Isles, while Phil has to find the Good Witch, and of course the two parties acquire extra members as they go, and eventually join up. Trot is joined by a living statue from Boston that the Scarecrow nicknames "Benny." Benny is a great character, strong but lacking in confidence; he complains a lot, and wants to be made "real" by the Wizard, only to decide at the novel's end that he already is real. Phil meets Herby the Medicine Man, who has (in prime Thompson form) a literal medicine chest! I already praised High Boy, and there are lots of other good characters, and some nice incidental encounters, especially the eternally circling Roundabouties. On the other hand, it does kind of feel like the characters breeze in and out of situations without ever being in danger.

Just like how in Hungry Tiger Thompson seemingly decided she never used Betsy for anything, so why not give her something to do, Giant Horse focuses on Trot. But also like Hungry Tiger, Thompson's Trot feels very generic. I mean, I don't think this is entirely her fault: Dorothy, Trot, and Betsy are basically all the same character as written by Baum. But what can distinguish them is their companions, and just as Hungry Tiger made the weird move of giving us Betsy without Hank the Mule, Giant Horse makes the even weirder move of Trot without Cap'n Bill. I would have liked to have seen the old sailor-man here! Not sure he was even mentioned. (Also, Thompson always says that Trot, like Betsy, came to Oz after a shipwreck... which is not how things happened in Scarecrow at all!)

My son seemed to enjoy it overall: he liked High Boy, he liked the escapades in the Roundabout Country and Up Town and the underground places beneath the Ozure Isles, he liked the chapter about the Good Witch of the North, he seemed boggled by the twist that Orin was the Good Witch. The main thing he did not like was Quiberon, who goes around breaking things—always his least favorite part of any Oz books. By and large, a solid Thompson, I think. Always entertaining, even if I disagree with her approach to some of the worldbuilding.

Giant Horse is still under copyright, meaning the only accessible edition is the Del Rey one from 1985. We bought our last couple Del Reys from the Oz Club, but they didn't have this one, so I bought it new on Amazon, which turned out to be a print-on-demand edition. I guess they don't do POD at the size of the original Thompson Del Reys, because this was about an inch taller than them, and proportionally wider. When I shelve all of my Thompsons together, they are going to look very higgledy-piggledy. And, of course, it omits the color plates. But if you want to read all the Thompsons, what else can you do?

Next up in sequence: Dot and Tot of Merryland