Book 31 in The Wizard of Oz
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Handy Mandy in Oz
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Something's Missing,
By
This review is from: Handy Mandy in Oz (Paperback)
This Oz book is not quite up to the standard of most of Thompson's later ones. The story idea is not a bad one, though minor royalty trying to regain a throne seems to be a stock item. Some of the characters are fairly interesting but there is nothing outstanding about any of them. The situations seem to resolve themselves with even more ease than usual; the conflict and drama are minimal.
The story centers around a goatherdess named Mandy. She is not from Oz or any of the surrounding fairy lands but she is distinctive in that her people all have seven arms. A geyser blows her to Oz where she encounters a minor kingdom with a usurper on the throne. She befriends the royal ox who is also intent on rescuing the royal princeling. They are aided by the ox's horns of plenty. It turns out that the missing prince is just the tip of the iceberg. An evil wizard is intent on conquering all of Oz. The classic Baum characters play only a peripheral role in this story. This is usually the best in Thompson's books. Most are her own creations. They are certainly much better done than in her earliest works but they are not top shelf.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Sprout Well-Budded Out,
This review is from: Handy Mandy in Oz (Paperback)
Is it possible that the fairyland of Oz is really a fictional metaphor for the Christian Heaven, or a fantasy parallel of broader Western conceptions of the afterlife? Ruth Plumly Thompson's Handy Mandy In Oz (1937) begins with young lass goat herd Mandy being propelled into the atmosphere by the sudden eruption of a spring under the mountain on which she lives. Sudden, potentially fatal acts of nature or abrupt, violent accidents that drive girls and boys into the stratosphere and beyond like corks are common in the Oz books, beginning with the first book, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, in which Dorothy is famously carried to Oz by a cyclone. In the same title, the Wizard has reached Oz by similar means; his hot air balloon has been blown off the face of the Earth by high winds. In 1908's Dorothy and The Wizard In Oz, Dorothy falls through a fissure in the ground during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and in The Scarecrow Of Oz (1915), little Trot and her adult male companion Cap'n Bill also reach the `other world,' if not Oz directly, by being sucked into a whirlpool. In John R. Neill's Lucky Bucky In Oz (1942), young lad Bucky is propelled into the lands surrounding Oz by an explosion on a ship in New York Harbor. Does Oz act as a kind of conduit that attracts the living like a magnet under such circumstances, or have Dorothy, Trot, and Bucky passed away into paradise? Interestingly, Baum, who adapted European fairy mythology and Theosophical beliefs for the Oz books, also had a backdoor method for entering Oz: in 1919's The Road To Oz, Dorothy, again back in Kansas, finds herself more or less `pixie led' - inexplicably lost in a familiar place - while on the road to American city Butterfield. Since the fairies were partially identified with the dead in Ireland and Scotland, Dorothy's "straying off the path" is open to a number of interpretations. To small Christian children then as now, Oz must certainly seem like Heaven, or least a happy, comforting purgatory where no one goes hungry, wants for anything, or ages; every one of its inhabitants lives forever in almost complete peace and serenity. In fact, Oz, with its minor greedy, power-lusting villains and occasional upsets, is perhaps more akin to Heaven before Lucifer's rebellion and expulsion. For Dorothy, who is eventually and permanently joined in Oz by beloved animal companion Toto and parental guardians Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, Oz is paradise, a place with just enough novelty and tension to make infinity enjoyable forever. If Oz enjoys a god figure, then it is child fairy Ozma; but Ozma, relatively mature sorceress Glinda the Good, and especially over-conceived sky voluptuary Polychrome are more akin to the traditional image of Christian angels. Outside its own borders, Oz has its hell and its devils too. Every Oz reader knows about the underground cavern kingdom of the Gnomes, which lies across the burning, fiery-hot desert in Ev (Evil?), and of Ev's demonic, shape-shifting Phanfasms, most malevolent of all Oz and Ev tribes. Handy Mandy in Oz is one of the lesser Thompson titles, enjoyable enough in itself but not quite developed enough in its narrative to join the classics in the Oz chronicle. Thompson introduces Mandy, who has seven arms, but, in clever conjunction with illustrator John R. Neill, doesn't make this apparent until the book's third chapter. Suddenly discovering herself in a Gillikin kingdom lorded over by a domineering false king, Mandy meets "royal ox" Nox, and the two escape in search of deposed boy king Kerry, who has been missing for two Oz years. Handy Mandy, who has a decided Protestant work ethic, is a solidly built, self-reliant, no-nonsense lass who, all things considered, makes an excellent role model. Thompson wisely fails to stress whether or not Mandy is beautiful, and allows Mandy a certain toughness of mind: Mandy has to be the only heroic Oz character before Jenny Jump who is suspicious of Ozma's buttery sweetness and perceives her Magic Picture to have negative, Big Brother-like potential. In one early chapter, Mandy, resolutely prepared to face any opposition, takes up not only a sword but a rifle, surely an Ozian first. Curmudgeon Nox the Ox, like Kabumpo the Elegant Elephant before him, is a similarly well-conceived character; Nox realistically loses his temper on occasion and doesn't suffer fools gladly. The villain of the book is fey sorcerer Wutz the Silver King, who Neill hilariously portrays as a slightly decadent, late-period John Barrymore. Wutz frees Ruggedo the Gnome King from his latest in a series of many enchantments and the two unscrupulous beings, ostensibly in partnership, plot against Ozma and one another. The story of Handy Mandy In Oz is, in pattern, so much like other previous Oz titles that the reader will easily guess not only who has captured the missing Kerry but what the outcome of the nefarious plot will be. The resurrection of Ruggedo alone will cause readers to pause to suppress a yawn. As a seven-armed wonder - three on one side, four awkwardly on the other - Handy Mandy may remind readers of an archetypal Indian goddess reinterpreted as a clog-wearing Dutch milkmaid. John R. Neill's illustrations are terrific throughout, including one depicting the futuristic, Art Deco interior of the Silver King's throne room, and another of frenzied Scraps the Patchwork Girl attacking the unprepared Mandy. Unlike some of the other Thompson titles, there are few elements of the book which reflect the influence of the Alice books. However, one of Neill's pictures of Mandy and Nox treading water, heads barely above the surface, appears to be a homage to Tenniel's illustrations for Alice chapter The Pool Of Tears, especially since, as in Carroll, the `pool' is generated from the body of one of the swimmers.
6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of best books read to my children, also enjoyed by me.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Handy Mandy in Oz (Paperback)
Better than the book Wizard of Oz by far. Imaginative. A very special book for girls. A very resourceful heroine without being too sweet, unusual for the time. Young boys will like it also, plenty of action.
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