The Patchwork Girl of Oz

1913, undated probably 1970s Rand McNally edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Bought new for $1.95
Paperback with stains and bent corners 
B+

Baum's "post-Oz" books didn't sell too well, and meanwhile his fans begged for more Oz books.  According to him, one of them suggested communicating with Oz by wireless telegraph.  Glinda found out and the Shaggy Man knew about telegraphs, so here we are, with a new Oz book.  And it's a good one.

The best thing about it is the new characters, starting with the title character.  The Patchwork Girl, or Scraps, as she comes to be known, is the first and probably best of the female constructed personages (Baumian for "people").  Like the Scarecrow, Jack Pumpkinhead, and to some degree the Tin Woodman, she's put together out of bits and pieces and then animated.  In fact, the Powder of Life is used on her, just like Jack.  (More about that later.)  When the Scarecrow meets her, he sees how much they have in common, and they become mutually infatuated.  In fact, if there's any truly canonical ship in the mostly prepubescent, pre-romance Oz, it's Scarecrow/Scraps.  Gilbert M. Sprague marries them off in The Patchwork Bride of Oz (1997), which I haven't read.

But it isn't just as a love interest for one of the favorite established characters that she's appealing.  Ojo secretly gives her extra doses of brains, and she uses them, from "Cleverness" to "Poesy" to "Bravery."  She's also very kind to Ojo because he's her friend, although she doesn't have a heart to make her sympathize with people she doesn't know.  The main quality she doesn't have is dignity, which she doesn't care for.  Baum's successor Ruth Plumly Thompson features Scraps more than some of his other characters, but I don't think she really gets Scraps, making her just goofy rather than also clever.

Ojo is the actual main character, with Scraps as his main sidekick.  He's somewhat reminiscent of Tip, but without the gender swap at the end of the story.  Like Tip, he has black hair and a mysterious background, and he lives all alone with a guardian.  Unc Nunkie is much kinder than Mombi, but because he speaks only one syllable at a time, Ojo hasn't grown up with much conversation.  As for the mysterious background, Unc Nunkie would be King of the Munchkins if "his people [hadn't] united with all the other countries of Oz in acknowledging Ozma as their sole ruler."  Was he the Munchkin king mentioned in the third and/or fourth Oz books?  What about the Tin Woodman still ruling all the Winkies?  What about all the little kingdoms that Baum and his successors will scatter through Oz, including in the very next book?  Thompson will try to sort out some of this in her books, including Ojo in Oz (1933), but there's probably no answer that can cover everything.

Ojo is called "the Unlucky," and he's more serious than Tip was, but, as I said, he does interfere with the creation of a creature who will be brought to life with the Powder.  And here again, we find Baum contradicting himself.  In Land, the Crooked Magician was called Dr. Nikidik, but here he's named Dr. Pipt.  Perhaps he's Nikidik Pipt, or Pipt Nikidik.  More importantly, in DatW, we were told that the Crooked Magician had died (this was before death became rare in Oz), and left the last of the Powder of Life to a distant relative, who used it on a bearskin rug.  Yet, here he is, stirring away at four kettles, making the Powder of Life.

The Powder takes six years to make.  That means it's been at least six years since the second book, which is plausible.  The earliest batch of the Powder was tried on the Glass Cat, another of the nifty new characters.  She's not exactly likable, with her conceit about her beauty and her brains ("you can see 'em work"), but she is fun.  If Scraps is the Jack Pumpkinhead to Tip's Ojo, then Bungle the useless cat is what he gets instead of the very useful Sawhorse.  Ojo is indeed unlucky.

The Powder brings to life one more creature, a phonograph named Victor Columbia Edison (a not very dated joke almost a century later).  In the 1909 Oz book, Dorothy said there couldn't be a phonograph in Oz.  (Only she pronounced "phonograph" in some cutesy Kansas way.)  But Dr. Pipt, who's been living a very isolated life for at least six years, owns a phonograph.  Maybe his wife, Margolotte, bought it, but it shows that Oz isn't entirely separate from the real world, or at least wasn't before Glinda cut it off at the end of Emerald City.  Vic, as Scraps nicknames him, is a minor character, just turning up so Baum can make fun of current musical genres.  When he meets the Shaggy Man, he plays a song about "coal-black Lulu," blues I guess.  This is borderline racist, although Baum's definition of a popular song remains pertinent and funny:  "One that the feeble-minded can remember the words of and those ignorant of music can whistle and sing."  (I like a lot of pop songs by the way, even the Spice Girls.)

The phonograph gets the last of the Powder through an accident, the same accident that causes the Liquid of Petrifaction to fall on Unc Nunkie and Margolotte.  This Liquid is similar to what Mombi threatened to make Tip into a statue with, only she was brewing hers fresh.  Since there's no more Powder of Life, Dr. Pipt will have to spend six years stirring another batch, unless Ojo can gather together the ingredients for the antidote to the Liquid.  So this is a "quest" Oz book, rather than a "meandering" Oz book, which is a good thing.  In the "meandering" Oz books, there's no urgency.  The characters take us on a tour of Oz.  In the "quest" books, we still get to see weird people and creatures, but we're not just tourists.

Ojo's love for his uncle, and concern for Margolotte, carries him forward through frustration and sometimes danger.  He even breaks the law to gather a six-leaf clover.  We get another look at the legal system in Oz, which has changed since Eureka's arrest in DatW.  Nowadays, especially in the Emerald City, law-breaking is rare, but prisoners are treated as guests, except for how they have to wear a ghost-like (or Klan-like) white sheet in public.  This is meant to save them embarrassment, but it of course draws attention.

Ozma is cracking down on magic-makers.  Starting in Emerald City, Glinda is the only one allowed to perform magic, except for the Wizard, whom she's training.  Ozma herself will gradually stop performing magic, which makes you wonder why she doesn't just give the Magic Belt back to the Nome King.  She does allow Ojo to continue his quest, but when it dead-ends because of the Tin Woodman's kind-hearted but stern refusal to allow Ojo to take the wing of a yellow butterfly, she has the Wizard bring Nunkie and Margolotte back to life.  The Crooked Magician becomes no longer Crooked and no longer a Magician.

Another of the ingredients is three hairs from a Woozy's tail.  The Woozy is just adorable, made all of squares and cubes, with a far from terrifying roar and an impressive ability to shoot fire when he hears the words "Krizzle-Kroo!"  I always wished there was more of the Woozy in later books, but Baum does less with him than with the Glass Cat, who's very memorable in the penultimate Baum book.

Speaking of cats, Eureka is referred to but not seen.  No one explains how she got back to Oz, or why she's now pink, when she was only temporarily pink because of the underground suns in DatW.  Billina, by the way, has hatched out another baker's dozen of chicks since the Shaggy Man left the Emerald City, making about 7000 total.  It's not clear if this includes her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.

Another of the returning animals is the Wise Donkey, who was visiting from Mo (no explanation of how he crossed the Deadly Desert) at the time that Glinda cut Oz off from the rest of the world.

There's Mo-ish wordplay in the description of giant Mr. Yoop, e.g. "P.S. Don't feed the Giant yourself."  We'll meet Mrs. Yoop in Tin Woodman.

Less dangerous than the hungry giant, but more troublesome to a (mostly) grown-up (mostly) politically correct reader like yours truly, are the Tottenhots.  An obvious reversal of "Hottentots," they're dusky little savages.  They're more pleasant than some of the people that Ojo encounters, including the lazy (white) Quadling, but they are racistly depicted, in text and art, although there's a much more offensive reference to Hottentots in a later Baum book.  (I have mixed feelings about the Books of Wonder edition of Patchwork Girl, which tries to omit the racism, but I don't own it, so I'm not reviewing it here.)

This is also another Oz book with a man flirting with a little girl (like Dorothy's masher in the last book).  The Chief of the Horners has nineteen daughters, from a tiny child to an almost grown woman.  Diksey Horner winks at all of them.  They "demurely cast down their eyes because their father is looking."  The chief is bringing them up "according to rules and regulations laid down by a leading bachelor."  Scraps thinks the bachelor should be skinned alive because the girls aren't allowed to romp and be jolly, like she does.

The Horners are at war with the Hoppers, due to a misunderstood pun about understanding.  Scraps and Dorothy make peace.

Dorothy and the Scarecrow have joined Ojo's quest for the second half, Bungle and the Woozy waiting for them in the Emerald City.  With Scraps, they make an awesome four-person team, particularly in Neill's illustrations.

Neill's art is about as good as usual, but contains errors of the wrong characters at the wrong points of the story, e.g. the Shaggy Man by the Trick River.  Neill captures the Patchwork Girl's whimsical charm, and there's a delightful two-page illustration of the Scarecrow on one knee before her.  Some of the "meat people" look nothing like they did almost a decade before in Land, such as the Guardian of the Gates and Jinjur.  One of my favorite renditions of Dorothy ever is the full-page portrait on p. 211.  He's hit or miss with Ojo, but the final picture, of Ojo reuniting with his uncle, the words "THE END" under the OZ logo, is just right.


Altogether, it's the best Oz book since Land, and definitely one of the most interesting Oz books of all.  By no means perfect, but a very welcome return.