The Scalawagons of Oz by John R. Neill
Back when I wrote up Neill's first Oz book, I wrote that "the thing I like about
more than anything else is that it might be the first Oz book to give us
a sense of what it's like to live in Oz." From the author's note at the beginning of his second, one discovers that this was in fact his explicit intention:
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| Originally published: 1941 Acquired: October 2023 Read aloud: November–December 2023 |
Day by day stirring events happen in the Land of OZ which we are compelled to let pass. No one will ever know of them.
It would be impossible to tell you all that happens in a whole year.
This book is the record of less than a week.
Basically, strange things are constantly happening in Oz; it's not that the books we get annually are the only significant events, rather, they are but the tip of the iceberg. (This is a handy get out for seeming continuity errors, of course. Why is Ojo an elephant boy now? Why is Jack Pumpkinhead trying to make Scraps into a proper lady? Why is the Scarecrow ruler of the Munchkins? Well, presumably, very exciting adventures occupying the other fifty-one weeks of the year would answer all of these questions.) The people of Oz are constantly going through wacky adventures... and, of course, finding it all immensely fun. Wouldn't you, if you couldn't get hurt and you knew your fairy queen could sort out any real problem with her magic belt? Indeed, Scalawagons kind of provides an answer to a problem that plagued Ruth Plumly Thompson's novels, where Oz was always coming within moment of being conquered by honestly pretty pathetic outside forces. Why shouldn't Ozma let these folks get as far as they can get, when she know ultimately everything will turn out fine? If everyone everyone who's not her gets a chance to stop the villains, they get something to do!
The premise of Scalawagons is that the Wizard invents self-driving cars, which he calls "scalawagons," and sets up a factory to produce them on Carrot Mountain in the Quadling Country with Tik-Tok as superintendent. Unfortunately, a creature called the Bell-Snickle fills them up with flabbergas, making them do all kinds of crazy things and fly away, meaning the cars are no-shows at the party devoted to their reveal. Jenny Jump, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Sawhorse set out to recover them, but in the meantime the scalawagons have crossed the Deadly Desert and run into the Mifkits, a tribe of strange creatures from outside Oz. (The Mifkits are from Baum's non-Oz novel John Dough and the Cherub, though based on their location and the fact that they can throw their heads, Neill seems to be thinking of the Scoodlers from Road to Oz.)
Like Wonder City, the main sense this book gives is that we should wonder at the weirdness of Oz, for there's little actual danger or stakes. And we do get some fun stuff: the Lollies and their Pops, who are living lollipops; water fairies that can be used to clean floors; a living clock who torments people who are late to work; living medicine bottles that are so desperate to be used they'll break your leg so they can fix it; the Winkie Woods being a place that literally winks on and off; bell-men who are literally men with bells on their head, who fly through the air having lost their home of Boboland (from Rinkitink in Oz, clearly Neill was working from the map this time out); living forests that travel the countryside in search of water.
But though my son always seemed quite engaged (indeed, he rated the book four out of four stars), I found it often tedious and pointless. One feels like Jenny's attempt to find the scalawagons ought to be the spine of whole book, but Neill must have run out of ideas because she catches up to them about halfway through and bringing the wayward machines back home is remarkably easy. From there, a bunch of random small encounters pad out the book, such as a stray Mifkit (Scoodler?) popping up in Oz and being given gainful employment, and the return of the Bell-Snickle and its doomed attempt to capture the Emerald City of Oz with an army of trees. Two different chapters are made up of nothing more than the Sawhorse running dangerously fast for no real reason; at one point, the Tin Woodman freezes up and can't be saved because there is allegedly no oil in the whole Emerald City. A bunch of animals go on a rampage for the second book in a row.
The characters, especially in the second half of the book, keep telling each other how much fun they're having, Neill presumably hoping this will trick the reader into thinking they're having fun. As I alluded to above, Ozma doesn't intervene to stop the Bell-Snickle from attacking the Emerald City so that Dorothy, Trot, Betsy, Jellia, and Jenny can try to stop it... but they don't actually do anything, they just follow it around in their scalawagons.
And though Neill draws, as usual, some delightful images (the Soldier with the Green Whiskers holding the detached head of the Mifkit by the tongue was my favorite), I felt like there were fewer of them than in Wonder City. Altogether, the book is maybe a tad more coherent than Wonder City... which is probably to its detriment, as it was impossible to be bored reading Wonder City, but I was fairly often bored here.
But, like I said, my five-year-old son seemed to enjoy it throughout, so I guess Neill knew his target demographic. The only thing he didn't like was the Bell-Snickle's assault on the scalawagon factory. And, you know, I continue to be appreciative that Neill remembers many of Baum's characters that Thompson clearly forgot about, like Em and Henry, the Sawhorse, and Tik-Tok, while keeping hers in play too (Captain Salt and Sir Hokus both get a few good lines).
Next up in sequence: Lucky Bucky in Oz
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