The Silver Princess in Oz

1938, 1990 International Wizard of Oz edition
Ruth Plumly Thompson
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Silver Princess in Oz
Original and/or purchase price unknown
Worn paperback
C+

OK, let's start with the pluses.  This is the best of the Prince & Princess romances in the Thompson books.  Randy has grown up from the 10-year-old in Purple Prince to a 16-year-old who's really 20, and therefore old enough to get married.  He falls in love at first sight with Planetty, the Princess from Anuther Planet.  (Not to be confused with Brother from Another Planet.)  The Neill drawings of the couple are charming, whether they're making goo-goo eyes or storming a palace.  Planetty's animal, Thun the Thundercolt, is (like her) metallic but (unlike her) silent and fiery.  Randy is accompanied by Kabumpo, and this is probably the book where I find the elephant least annoying, since for once he's not scorning everyone they meet.

The minuses.  I'm not crazy about the ending, since Planetty and Thun lose some of what makes them special in order to live on Earth.  Most of the lands visited are forgettable, in particular Gaper's Gulch, as if Thompson needed to put in another lethargic kingdom after Pokes and Fix City in Royal Book.  The land of tickling feathers, whatever it's called, is pointless, except to prove how strong Thun and Planetty are.  The Box Wood is OK.  And I like the concept of Nonagon Island, which sounds smaller than Octagon Island. 

Randy and Kabumpo meet the aliens on their way to visit Jinnicky the Red Jinn.  They come in the midst of a revolution.  And here we get to the racism.  Not only are Jinnicky's people slaves, they are black slaves, who speak and look like turn-of-the-century stereotypes of American blacks.  The torn nature of this book is literally illustrated by the pictures on pp. 176-77.  On the left, we have beautiful and brave Planetty and her noble steed attacking, and on the left we have two black men running away, their hair scraggly, their facial features grotesquely exaggerated.

Since I prefer innuendo greatly to racism, it's disappointing that Thompson put her energy for inappropriateness in this direction.   The best she can come up with for suggestiveness is "the Red Jinn trying to beat off the fisherman with his puny hands."

The afterword, by Thompson's niece, of course doesn't address the racism, but it is notable that she refers to how Thompson lost her father at a young age, which is why she had to support her mother and siblings.  Perhaps that's why fathers (and father figures) are so much more important than mothers in her Oz books, even in this book where a princess is born from a spring.