Customer Reviews

The Magical Mimics in Oz

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Soem Oz Fans consider this dark, but I personally LOVED it and enjoyed reading it very much. Its based on how Dorothy and the Wizard are taking care of Oz while Ozma and Glinda are away, but the evil Mimic Rulers want to conquer Oz since tehy want revenge on Queen Lurline, who turned Oz into a fairy country ages ago. They trap Dorothy and teh Wizard in a wicked spell, and turn themselves into Dorothy and the Wizard themselves, and try to find Ozma's magic items which could help their tribe to invade Oz and destroy all the people. However, Ozana, the Guardian Fairy of Oz helps Dorothy and the Wizard......but can she help them BEFORE the Mimics find Ozma's spells and before Ozma and Glinda return to Oz? I think it was a thrilling Oz adventure with a wonderful ending. If you like the Oz Books, I recommend this....and infact, I liked the way it was 'dark' for a change......Jack Snow shows us his brilliant imagination and writing skills ion this BRILLIANT Oz Story.....

Publisher Reilly & Lee Co. consistently had great luck in discovering new authors to carry on the Oz chronicle after L. Frank Baum's passing. Ruth Plumly Thompson, who followed Baum, wrote 19 smoothly written, strong, and inventive titles. Longtime Oz illustrator John R. Neill subsequently authored three, one of which, The Wonder City Of Oz (1940), is a genuine classic in the series.

The Magical Mimics In Oz (1946), the first of two books by Jack Snow, was yet another success. While its story is derivative of several past Oz tales, Snow confidently took the driver's seat when he took up his pen; his vision of Oz is spirited, playful, and precise. Most noticeably, Snow gave Dame Nature a prominent role in his conception of the Oz utopia. Princess Ozana's Story Blossom Garden, for example, is extensively and lovingly described: "Flowers of every variety grew in profusion. Save for the mossy paths that wound through the garden, there was not a spot on the ground that was without blossoming plants. As for the pond, it was like a small sea of lovely blossoming water plants. At the edge of the pond, Dorothy noted three graceful white swans, sleeping in the shade of a large flowering bush that grew at the edge of the pond and trailed its blossoms into the water. The air was sweet with the perfume of thousands and thousands of flowers." For the fairy Ozana, lonely for the companionship of living things on her mountaintop home were she stands perpetual guard over the evil Mimics, has created a garden of vocal, story-telling flowers. The perfumes of the flowers, Ozana tells Dorothy and the Little Wizard, are the essence of their souls. Snow lovingly spends an entire chapter on the Story Blossom Garden, and, though the plants have been awakened to a new degree of life by Ozana's magic, Snow makes it clear that nature, in and of itself, is majestic and miraculous.

In a later chapter, Toto, Betsy Bobbins, and Hank the Mule take a stroll into the meadows surrounding the Emerald City to pick flowers and enjoy a picnic. Snow writes, "there were few things Toto liked better than to get out in the country and frolic in the fields." Jack Kramer's illustrations of their outing, and of Toto basking in the sun, underscore Snow's Eden-like conception of the simple outdoors. Unlike the depictions of nature in the Baum and Neill books, which characterize Ozian nature as a somewhat brittle facsimile of nature as readers know it, Snow's natural world, like Thompson's, breathes, sings, and emits an intrinsic magic which has nothing to do with sorcery. Thus Oz, in the Thompson and Snow titles, is a kind of Arcadia, where nature in its pure state is a powerful, fundamental source of joy and inspiration.

The Magical Mimics In Oz has been called `dark' by some, largely because its story sees the Emerald City conquered and its royal family enchanted, imprisoned, and threatened with unpleasant fates. Werewolf-like Queen Ra, the evil leader of the protean Mimics, taunts her bound captives with her plans for their immediate futures: Scraps the Patchwork Girl is to be converted into a pin cushion, the Glass Cat melted down and rolled into marbles, Billina the Yellow Hen roasted for dinner, the Woozy chopped into building blocks, and Tik Tok eternally disassembled and reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle for Ra's amusement. The Scarecrow, who vocally leads the opposition, is simply to be burned to a cinder. But these threats are clearly paper tigers and bullying threats, more amusing and startling than cause for genuine alarm, as the Magical Mimics In Oz, like the Thompson and Neill chronicles, is a fun and entertaining book without a genuinely darker subtext.

In fact, Baum's own The Tin Woodman Of Oz (1918), with its lengthy focus on actual human dismemberment, is by leaps and bounds the more unsettling story. In that book's color cover illustration, there is red blood on the edge of the Woodman's axe; and the Scarecrow, larking about, sings, "to cut me don't hurt, for I've no blood to squirt." Fans of the Baum titles have historically failed to acknowledge that Baum's continual use of the adjective "meat" (rather than `flesh') to describe his human and animal characters might be unsettling to small children, for whom consumption of meat is likely a part of their everyday lives.

Snow's characterizations of the Oz royal family are beautifully realized throughout. The Magical Mimics In Oz, more than any other Oz title, regardless of author, is vastly inclusive: Ozma, Glinda, Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, and the Little Wizard are actively present, but so are Professor Wooglebug, the Sawhorse, the Tin Woodman, Tik Tok, the Hungry Tiger, gate keeper Omby Amby, Billina, Aunt Em, Cap'n Bill, Ojo, the Woozy, Button Bright, Uncle Henry, Betsy Bobbin, Hank the Mule, the Cowardly Lion, the Glass Cat, Trot, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Pink Kitten, and Scraps the Patchwork Girl. Even the Frog Man, Dr. Pipt, and Cayke the Cookie Cook get a mention. Sadly, recent Neill creations Number Nine, Jenny Jump, Lucky Bucky, and the Scalawagons are nowhere in evidence. Classic Thompson character Kabumpo the Elegant Elephant is also conspicuously absent.

Snow's evil Mimics of Mount Illuso, literal first cousins to the Phanfasms, while not remarkably original, nonetheless make effective villains; happily, Snow allows the Mimics to accomplish some genuine dirty work instead of merely planning and threatening to. New Snow creations Princess Ozana and living pine puppets Mr. and Mrs. Hi-Lo are cheerful additions to the Oz chronicle. Illustrator Jack Kramer's interesting depiction of Mimic King Umb as a horned, cloven-hoofed man-monster may have put some parental noses out of point in 1946; it's interesting that Snow and Kramer avoid a direct depiction of the historical Devil of Christianity by allowing King Umb only one horn, which juts from his forehead like a unicorn's. Elsewhere, Kramer's illustrations are clearly a loving tribute to Neill. Recommended.