The Yellow Knight of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill
Sir Hokus of Pokes is one of my favorite Oz characters, introduced back in Royal Book of Oz as an Arthurian knight who was trapped in a city in Oz for centuries until freed by Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. He has a great fish-out-of-water vibe, expecting things to operate according to the conventions of medieval romance (he's always hoping to slay a dragon or rescue a lady, but in Oz the ladies mostly rescue themselves), but he's dependable and stalwart. Plus he's always exclaiming things like "Uds daggers!"
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| Originally published: 1930 Acquired: October 2022 Read aloud: November–December 2022 |
So I was looking forward to a Sir Hokus focus novel, and I think so was my son. The novel starts quite promisingly: Sir Hokus wants to go on a quest, but all the inhabitants of the Emerald City want to come with him, and he's too polite to say "no," and soon it's not going to be a proper quest at all... if the bizarre inhabitants of the Emerald City can even get organized enough to actually get started. So, Sir Hokus sneaks away in the night to do it right. He ends up almost marrying a swamp queen and befriending a giant turtle. He and the turtle, Ploppa, have a great rapport... but as Sir Hokus loves quests and Ploppa loves swamps, they can never be together, alas.
But I think my son always struggles with the ones without a kid viewpoint character. The kinds of things Sir Hokus wants (a wife, to understand his forgotten history) don't really resonate for a four-year-old. Most Oz books are careful to send their weird characters off with a child viewpoint: Woot in Tin Woodman, Bob Up in Cowardly Lion, Betsy Bobbin in Hungry Tiger. Sir Hokus is human... but he's not really a viewpoint character, it's like how Doctor Who always has to have a companion. There is a boy named Speedy introduced as a child protagonist here, but he doesn't meet up with Sir Hokus until pretty late in the narrative. And besides, my son likes the girls best! Perhaps that's why it took us almost two months to get through this one. (I am less certain about his attitude toward the Oz books than I was six months ago. Sometimes he is quite enthusiastic; sometimes he asks me when we're going to be done as though reading them is some kind of prison sentence. Recently he told me he wanted to read Wonderful Wizard again. Maybe he is just more simpatico with Baum than Thompson? He was so young when we started that if we ever do go back to the beginning, it will be as though he never read any of them!)
Like many Thompson novels, there are enchanted people and kingdoms here. In a corner of the Winkie Country, five centuries ago, the Sultan of Samandra enchanted two neighboring pocket kingdoms, Corumbia and Corabia, transforming their inhabitants, destroying their castles, and especially getting rid of the prince of Corumbia (the titular yellow knight) and the princess of Corabia; they were due to be married, and the Sultan incorrectly feared the resulting united kingdom would destroy his. If you've read any Thompson novel, you won't be surprised that 1) everything gets disenchanted largely because of a series of coincidences, and 2) that the missing royals are both members of the adventuring party. Specifically, the missing princess is Marygolden, a statue Speedy brings to life on his travels, and the missing prince is of course Sir Hokus, who ends the novel transformed from a comedy old Arthurian knight into a generic young fairy-tale prince.
What a mistake! I don't really care about the enchantment of Marygolden, but to take one of the two most interesting characters added to the Oz pantheon in the past nine books and replace him with a boring one? When I explained to my son what had happened (he didn't get it at first), he flatly rejected it. And making Sir Hokus into an Oz inhabitant, rather than an actual Arthurian knight, is a retcon that technically fits with the letter of what we learned about his history in Royal Book (that he was from England was a guess by Dorothy), but not the spirit. And besides, it violates Mollmann's Law of Retcons: "The new history must be at least as interesting, if not more interesting, as the old history being replaced." It is hard to care about the enchantment of these two kingdoms, and I know my son struggled to follow all the relevant backstory.
All that said, there's stuff to like. This book gives us Speedy, Thompson's second recurring boy protagonist after Peter (from Gnome King and Jack Pumpkinhead). Peter is fun, but I like Speedy more: he's got his essentialist ideas about gender just like Peter, but he's willing to listen to people, and works things out cleverly in a way Peter rarely does. Less brash, more what I expect from a kid in an Oz story. Speedy is sent to Mars on a rocket by his inventor uncle (!), but when the rocket turns around, Speedy crashes through the crust of the Earth into an underground country called Subterranea. I found this place pretty boring, but when he gets out, he's in Oz of course, and he has some good escapades with Marygolden, particularly in the country where people go from babies to old men and back again in the course of hours. I also liked Stampedro, the Yellow Knight's steed; Thompson always does well by horses, I reckon. (Which makes it even more of a shame she doesn't care a jot for the Saw-Horse.) It's nice for the Comfortable Camel to make a return, and we hear about his backstory too, but the Doubtful Dromedary sits out the entire story, alas.
So overall, one of Thompson's lesser efforts. Not as consistently fun as some of her others, not as kid-friendly for a variety of reasons, and based on a fundamentally bad premise. I am sorry this means no more appearances by Sir Hokus ever again. (Though I understand he pops up a couple times regardless. We shall see.)
Next up in sequence: Pirates in Oz
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