Not The Same

Finished all the Oz books....heavy sigh. I'm so happy I read them all, but sad there are no more. I enjoyed them except the very last one, The Royal Book of Oz. Somehow it just didn't seem as ...Ozian. The character interaction was off, for example, too many puns. Baum was very funny and did use puns, but not like the last book. Also, the odd situations and creatures seemed forced. I just didn't like it.


I knew Baum had been ill and wondered if perhaps that could have been the reason his last effort wasn't quite as good. As I dug deeper, I discovered that the last so-called Baum book wasn't written by him at all, even though in the forward to the book his wife says it was constructed from his notes. Most historians now believe that the woman who eventually wrote more Oz books, Ruth Plumly Thompson, also wrote The Royal Book of Oz in its entirety.

Her writing isn't bad, it just isn't Baum.

I've enjoyed other Oz adaptation such as the Wicked books by Maguire because those don't try to be Baum books. And, unlike the recent Oz movie, the characters, in my opinion, deepen what Baum had intended.

I read that Thompson did love the Oz books and tried as hard as she could to imitate Baum. I believe her. But for me it just wasn't the same. Oh, and the kitten wasn't purple, it was PINK. :-)