Following the death of L. Frank Baum, Ruth Plumly Thompson was asked by the publishers of the Oz books to continue the series with new stories. She accepted the honor of becoming the 2nd Royal Historian of Oz by producing one Oz book each year through the 1920s and 1930s. My own particular favorite of […]
I’ve had these Oz books with me for nearly 60 years. I have one more wheel’s worth plus a few spares.
Here is a picture of my 104 year old edition of L. Frank Baum’s The Road to Oz. Mr. Baum had 9 more Oz books to write in his future when this story was published, but he already itched to escape Oz for other lands. He writes in the introduction: -To my readers: Well, my […]
This is Ruth Plumly Thompson. She was chosen to continue L. Frank Baum’s Oz series after his death. I believe she wrote 18 Oz books in the 1920s and 1930s, and a very fine job she did. She carried on with great imagination, plots, characters, humor, and wordplay. She also loved adverbs. Adverbs positively preened […]
From 1900 to 1920 there was no educational television. In fact, there was no television at all. Therefore, instead of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, L. Frank Baum’s Oz books delighted and gently taught the best aspects of humanity to the children of the early 20th century, for he was a wonderful storyteller gifted […]
Here is the Oz corner of my library. Left to right are Kabumpo in Oz, The Wonder City of Oz, The Gnome King of Oz, The Shaggy Man of Oz, Lucky Bucky in Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Royal Book of Oz, The Road to Oz, and The Annotated Wizard of Oz. Stacked […]
Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, drawn by John R. Neill, is prominently featured in Ruth Plumly Thompson’s 1927 Oz book, The Gnome King of Oz. I borrowed Plumly as a name for the Earth girl Bekka meets later in her chronicles because I particularly loved Ruth Plumly Thompson’s Oz books when I was a young fellow. […]
The creator of Oz, L. Frank Baum, greatly influenced me in my approach to writing The Bekka Chronicles. As a child I read all of them, dreaming myself into Oz. Mr. Baum’s tales share characters from one story to the next, and yet each book is complete in itself with a beginning, middle and end. […]
Following Bekka, the fourth chronicler of Boad will be Plumly, so named by me in honor of Ruth Plumly Thompson, who continued writing the Oz books after L. Frank Baum’s death. I received The Gnome King of Oz as a birthday present in 1955. Imagine how thrilled I was to rip off the wrapping paper […]
