Day 1 - Ugu the Shoemaker climbs the Yips' Mountain at night - steals Magic Dishpan
  and all Oz magic that night - kidnaps Ozma
Day 2 - Ugu enchants Ozma - Cayke misses her dishpan and goes to Frogman for help
  - the council of Ozma's advisors is summoned
Day 3 - Frogman declares his intention to search for the Magic Dishpan - the search
  parties looking for Ozma disperse to the different countries - Toto follows Dorothy
  - Dorothy's party spends night in shepherd's cabin
Day 4 - Frogman's party descends halfway down Yip Mountain - Dorothy's party passes
  Merry-Go-Round Mountains, Thi - night at edge of Great Orchard
Day 5 - Button-Bright loses himself, eats enchanted peach - night at far side of
  orchard - Frogman crosses ditch, meets Wiljon
Day 6 - Dorothy's party visits Herku - night in Czarover's palace 
Day 7 - Frogman bathes in Truth Pond ("the very morning when the travelers from
  the Emerald City bade farewell to the Czarover") - night on shore of
  Winkie River
Day 8 - Frogman's party visits Bear Center - two parties spend night on opposite
  sides of a hill
Day 9 - The parties join forces - Button-Bright gets lost again - night in "little
  grove" near Ugu's castle
Day 10 - They sight the wickerwork castle - Button-Bright is found - they storm
  the castle - Dorothy enchants Ugu but he escapes - Ozma is disenchanted
Day 11 - They begin the journey to the EC
 
The river trip to the Emerald City takes "more than a day," and there
is a week of celebration following Ozma's return. Sometime during this period
the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow discover the Magic Dishpan and it is returned to its owner.
 
"Weeks later" Dorothy meets the enchanted Ugu, who asks to be forgiven.

Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 08:34:25 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ, for starters
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Now to LOST PRINCESS. In his introduction for SCARECROW, Baum wrote,
"Dorothy has promised me that Button-Bright and the three girls are sure to
encounter, in the near future, some marvelous adventures in the Land of Oz,
which I hope to be permitted to relate to you in the next Oz book." 

  As we know, Baum was unable to do that. Instead, he published RINKITINK.
In the introduction to that book, Baum wrote: "If I am permitted to write
another Oz book it will tell of some thrilling adventures encountered by
Dorothy, Betsy Bobbin, Trot and the Patchwork Girl right in the Land of Oz,
and how they discovered some amazing creatures that could never have
existed outside a fairyland. I have an idea that about the time you are
reading this story of Rinkitink I shall be writing that story of Adventures
in Oz."

  In both cases, it's clear that Baum was describing LOST PRINCESS, an idea
or manuscript still in development. What made him fall behind his plans for
writing the girls' adventures after SCARECROW? We know he faced both health
and business crises. In addition, it might have been harder than Baum
expected to narrate Ozma's disappearance as a mystery story [more about
that later].

  Now for an Oz-as-history analysis of the delay in publishing LOST
PRINCESS: I'm struck by how Baum twice used the term "permitted" in these
book introductions. From whom would the Royal Historian have to get
permission to write LOST PRINCESS? Why, from Princess Ozma, of course. It's
conceivable that benevolent despot suppressed the story of Ugu's thefts and
kidnapping--at least until she'd developed ways to prevent folks from
repeating those crimes. I can imagine a wireless telegraph conversation
like this:

    "I'm sorry, Mr. Baum, but Ozma says nobody 
    must read our adventures rescuing her jes' yet."

      "But the children are asking me for a new book. 
    Not to mention Mr. Reilly and Mr. Britton."

      "I s'pose you could tell them about the time a 
    few years back when the Wizard and I rescued 
    the King an' Queen of Pingaree from that wicked 
    ol' King Ruggedo."

      "I thought Ruggedo isn't a king anymore."

      "He isn't."

      "Is Pingaree part of Oz?"

      "No, it's off in the ocean."

      "Was it an exciting adventure for you?"

      "Not really. But it was exciting for Inga."

      "Who's Inga?"

      "He's the boy at the start of the story. You see,..."

Meanwhile, Ozma could have been honing her magical skills, adding to what
she came by naturally--see David Hulan's essay "ARE YOU A GOOD RULER OR A
BAD RULER? An inquiry into the quality of Ozma's governance". One logical
source of her added, non-innate powers is the material confiscated from
Ugu's workshop [303], which he'd inherited from the ancestor Vig calls "the
greatest wizard and sorcerer who has ever lived" [174--Melody Grandy, would
this be Wam?].

  Incidentally, Baum's introduction for LOST PRINCESS abandons the pretense
of his previous two prefaces that he's simply a historian. Instead, he
presents the new story as a fiction he imagined in response to a little
girl's question, and provides a rather high-handed paean to our
imaginations. Baum seems to be writing not really "To My Readers" but to
adults, as in WIZARD, issuing an apologia for his profession that his
readers really don't need. 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 13:13:15 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
 
Some "Lost Princess" comments: I referred a while back to David L. 
Greene's article on "Baum's Later Oz Books" ("Bugle," Vol. 16 #1).  It 
has some discussion of how Baum wrote "Lost Princess" (as shown in 
surviving correspondence with the publishers).  Initially, he was 
planning a book that would be called something like "The Three Girls 
in Oz," and would have Dorothy, Betsy, and Trot adventuring together 
in a journey around Oz.  Michael Riley's "Beyond Oz" book comments 
that "Lost Princess" was the first Oz book to be set in the opening 
chapter in the Emerald City, and he suggests that, having explored the 
border areas outside Oz to see how far he could get away from the 
kids' demand for Oz while technically still satisfying it (and reaching 
what was probably maximum distance in the last book of the 
exploration group, "Rinkitink," where he was rewriting an actual non-Oz 
book), he had now decided that he really did want to explore Oz in 
detail himself.  All of his last few Oz books are set entirely in Oz and 
have plots of having characters go out to explore sections of the 
country.  In the others, the exploration was given some motive other 
than simply wanting to go and explore, and in the process of writing 
what would have been "The 3 Girls," he came up with the "lost 
princess" element to give them a reason to go exploring.  (Also in the 
process, he added a lot more people to go off exploring with them, 
and wound up having essentially nothing for Betsy and Trot to do in 
the story, which seems a pity.  It might have been a good idea if he'd 
left them out, maybe by sending them off on some of the other search 
parties, but perhaps he kept thinking that he'd find something for them 
to do in the course of the story, and hoped that he'd find some 
moments to spend narrative time dramatizing the close friendship that 
he meant to show as having grown among them.  By the time he'd 
realized that the task of finding Ozma was really compelling which 
characters were getting spotlighted, he was perhaps a good way into 
the story, and didn't want to go back and excise the two of the three 
who'd become extraneous to the story.)  In the Irrelevant Episode dept 
(I keep reversing the initialese for this and wanting to call the type 
Extraneous Incidents), the most notable example in "Lost Princess" is 
the visit to the Thists.  Dan Mannix had an article in the "Bugle" about 
the influence of Wagner's Ring Cycle on Baum, mostly in terms of the 
Nome King as similar to similar to the gold-greedy Alberich the Dwarf, 
but he also suggested that the point of the visit to the Thists might 
have been getting to run a musical mechanical dragon through the 
scene out of fondness for the mechanical dragon representing Fafner 
in "Siegfried."  Although the Thists are not really necessary to the 
story, they (along with the Herkus and the stuffed bears) give Baum 
room for the kind of gently satiric arguments over the nature of good 
government that he liked to include.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 10:56:27 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ mystery
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
"Princess Ozma...was lost. She had completely disappeared." What a terrific
start for an Oz book! LOST PRINCESS has several ingredients of the classic
mystery form that had developed within Baum's lifetime. There's a seemingly
untraceable crime, committed with careful planning by a malicious and
greedy genius. Ozma's friends seem at first to have the resources to solve
the mystery, track down the culprit, and right his wrongs. Baum even refers
to his heroines as "girl detectives" [73], and the Little Pink Bear as a
"pink Pinkerton" [211]--both Pinkerton agents and young female detectives
had been appearing in dime novels for decades.

  Unfortunately, LOST PRINCESS doesn't develop into a mystery story because
it lacks the *other* ingredients we'd need. There are no clues for the
detectives--and us--to analyze. There are no red herrings; as Isaac Azimov
has written, a classic mystery leads readers toward at least one conclusion
that turns out to be wrong. There's no systematic listing and evaluation of
suspects. Rather than becoming a battle of wits between criminal and
detective, LOST PRINCESS shows Ugu tracked down through magic and luck. 

  Indeed, in this war of wits, I'm sorry to say our heroes are outmatched.
Glinda's organization of search parties seems poorly thought out. She sends
fragile Jack Pumpkinhead and two mortals into the wild Gillikin Country.
She assigns the Tin Woodman not to the Winkie territory, where he commands
authority, but to her own land. She ignores the Hungry Tiger, the Glass
Cat, and Oz's many birds, who could cover much more ground [Betsy cites
birds' knowledge of geography on page 90, and the Bluefinch recognizes
Button-Bright on page 157]. Indeed, Glinda's very plan of sending out small
search parties is more wishful than wise. More than anyone else she should
know the full dimension and complexity of Oz; more than anyone else she
should realize a magician powerful enough to steal her Book of Records
could also have penetrated her Barrier of Invisibility from outside Oz.

  The Wizard doesn't seem much shrewder. He takes an uncommonly long time
to look for his black bag [not till 66]. He wrongly deduces the villain
stole the magic tools to prevent Ozma's friends from rescuing her [68]. As
soon as he hears about Ugu, the Wizard assumes he is "just the magician we
are searching for" [174]. Dorothy also makes unwarranted assumptions about
where Ozma is: "Oh, that [dark place] must be a prison dungeon cell!" [235;
cf. 159]

  The Frogman and Cayke are equally unrealistic in their search for the
Golden Dishpan. A Winkie even tells them, "your method [is] sort of
haphazard and indefinite" [190]. Their unfounded optimism is easier to
understand, of course, because they're from an isolated corner of Oz. 

  This analysis may seem unduly harsh, especially to Glinda fans [Hi,
Dave!]. The Ozians' actions are quite understandable and consistent with
their personalities. They aren't used to crime, much less tracking down
criminals; they're in distress at the loss of Ozma and the magic treasures.
But by comparing their actions to what a classic detective--such as
Sherlock Holmes--would have done, we can see how removed most of LOST
PRINCESS is from a classic mystery story. 

  Only toward the end of the book does a mystery tale develop, in the
search for where Ugu hid Ozma. Here at last we do have clues: what the
Little Pink Bear has said at various times. We readers also have one clue
that Dorothy and the Wizard don't, thanks to Button-Bright's unique thought
process. Despite recognizing the name Ugu the Shoemaker on page 173, the
boy says nothing about the peach that animals had told him Ugu had
enchanted until page 297! 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 17:47:35 -0500
From: "R. M. Atticus Gannaway" <atty242 at mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-02-98
 
My thoughts on THE LOST PRINCESS OF OZ:
 
When I first read the book at the age of 9 or 10, its inconsistencies
marred my enjoyment of it.  Specifically, Baum tells us that Dorothy had
little notion of how the Magic Belt worked!  The girl who collected the
belt from Roquat and later gave it to Ozma could no longer use it?  She has
to practice transformations after turning the Nome Army into eggs?!
 
This is still irksome to me as I re-read the book 10 or 11 years later.
The belt definitely assumes deus-ex-machina status, in my mind, and could
easily have been omitted by, say, having Scraps' chandelier contain some
sort of lever to reverse the room again; the Patchwork Girl inadvertently
sets the room in motion to return to its rightful orientation.  Had the
"pyramid trick" worked, which it might have if Cayke weren't so squeamish,
the Wizard could have reached his tools and accomplished Ugu's
transformation himself.  And thus, one of many ways the untruly-ringing
"quick fix" could have been avoided.
 
Unfortunately, I have other grievances.  The Thi episode is pointless.  And
Neill doesn't even illustrate a mechanical dragon, which might have
inspired some mild interest in the chapter for me.  I wish Baum wouldn't
have spoiled the mystery by needlessly having the bird tell Button-Bright
about the peach, and the tracking down of Ugu strikes me as far too neat.
Aside from that, we hardly even *see* Ugu, who has tremendous potential for
psychological interest--an evildoer with no sense of the wrongness of his
actions.
 
I agree with J. L. Bell that a mystery story LOST PRINCESS is not.  As a
child, I had anticipated one and was sorely disappointed.  There are, of
course, nice elements to the tale--Baum gives the Cowardly Lion some real
philosophical gems, and the Frogman's forced hypocrisy reversal is
amusing--but I'm afraid that, while I can't help liking the story somewhat
(it's Baum, it's Oz), I think Baum could have done quite a bit better here.
 And considering Glinda's uncharacteristically haphazard method of
searching for Ozma, which Mr. Bell also mentioned, I hope that when the
Found Princess returned to the Emerald City she got down on her dainty
little knees and thanked Lurline that she was rescued at all!
 
To please a child is a sweet and lovely thing--but it didn't quite happen
this time, Mr. Baum.
 
Blasphemozly,
Atticus
* * *
 
"...[T]here is something else: the faith of those despised and endangered
that they are not merely the sum of damages done to them."
 
Visit my webpage at

Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998 09:29:06 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ and Magic Belt
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Ruth Berman wrote:
<<Although the Thists are not really necessary to the story, they (along
with the Herkus and the stuffed bears) give Baum room for...gently satiric
arguments over the nature of good government.>>
 
I find Baum's depictions of different forms of government in LOST PRINCESS
to be less gentle and varied than in other books (EMERALD CITY, for
instance). We see four distinct societies, in addition to Ozma's power
structure. And all four seem to be governed deceitfully or harshly.

  The Yips take their disputes to a giant frog because "the Frogman was
shrewd enough to make the people believe he was far more wise than he
really was. They never suspected he was a humbug." Like another humbug
ruler in the Oz series, the Frogman is adept at securing "time to think" by
sending difficult callers on errands [44-6].

  In Thi the High Coco-Lorum hides his power from the people. "In reality,
I am the King, but the people don't know it. . . . I make the laws to suit
myself" [131]. He even seems to hide the name of the city from his people:
they say, "We have no occasion to call our city anything" [126], but he
says, "We call our city Thi" [129]. (I should acknowledge that the High
Coco-Lorum's house is "neither better nor worse than the others" in Thi
[128]; Baum leaves the Pink side of Sky Island the same idealized way.) 

  In Herku, Vig has enslaved the giants, making them wear golden collars
riveted around their necks [166]. For interrupting him with bad news of
burned soup, he throws one giant out a window [172]. Though Vig is happy to
give the Wizard some zozoso, "I never allow the giants to have it...and
keep all the stuff locked up in my private laboratory" [172]. That Vig is
quite close to being a villain can be seen in the parallels between him and
Ugu: both are ambitious magic-workers who carefully guard their secrets
[173], and neither sees Ugu's ambition as having made him wicked [175,
241]. 

  Even the Big Lavender Bear, the most soft-hearted ruler our search
parties encounter, makes a mockery of Bear Center's laws and threatens to
banish naughty bears to--horrors!--America [218]. 

  These depictions of rulers show us how valuable it is for Oz to have
Ozma. As Baum's introduction quotes a reader, "I s'pose if Ozma ever got
lost, or stolen, ev'rybody in Oz would be dreadful sorry." 

  Thanks, Ruth, for mentioning the BUGLE article that discusses Baum's
correspondence in regard to LOST PRINCESS.
 
Once I stop viewing LOST PRINCESS as a mystery story, being frustrated by
the lack of clues and detection, I enjoy it as a good-versus-evil 
adventure. It's like a movie serial or comic book, especially after Chapter
19, when we've seen Ugu commit his crimes. We're in for a seesaw game of
"Magic Against Magic" as the rescuers approach the wicker castle. 

  Dorothy carries the trump card, of course. I remember disliking how
cavalierly Baum handles the Magic Belt here, disregarding what he told us
in previous books. Near the quest's beginning Dorothy insists "I've never
found out about" the Belt's powers [97], but of course she had found out in
OZMA. Later she oh-so-conveniently recalls intricate directions for its
use. And the method she remembers is one we've never heard about before.
All that contradiction could have been avoided if Baum had given Dorothy
one more speech: "It's been ever so long since I used the Belt against the
Nome King. Ozma told me she'd found out a way it grants wishes, but I can't
'member any of how it works now. P'rhaps I'll find out by the time we meet
whoever stole her." 

  That still leaves one contradiction to gnaw at us Oz fans: How can
Dorothy transform the Sawhorse into a potato-masher [290] when Ruggedo
couldn't freeze that wooden beast in OZMA? People probably have different
theories, but here's my childhood system of explaining the Magic Belt's
powers. There are four: 

1) Protecting its wearer from harm.
2) Transporting, shrinking, and enlarging things--i.e., not changing their
essence, but changing how they stand in relation to other things. This
power, for whatever reason, doesn't work on wood.
3) Transforming things--changing their essence. This power does work on
wood, and is what the Nome King most enjoyed using.
4) Granting a wish so powerful that it can overcome most other magic. This
action is so draining that the Belt can grant only one wish a day. It
therefore has an elaborate trigger: close right eye, wiggle left toe, draw
breath.

  That leaves only the knotty question of why the sleepless Sawhorse stood
still for being transformed into a potato masher. Maybe the horse was glad
to be put out to spud. 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 11:17:25 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
J. L. Bell: I like your idea that Ozma might have suppressed the events 
of "Lost Princess" until she'd had time to beef up security a bit.  On 
the switch from introducing himself as Royal Historian to 
acknowledging the story is fiction -- it would have been difficult to use 
the Royal Historian presentation and at the same time give credit to 
the youngster who suggested the plot -- Baum felt that giving credit 
was the more important, evidently.  I think you're right that the ode to 
imagination as a defense of fantasy writing is really addressed to the 
parents rather than to the kids.  Interesting set of comments on ways 
in which "Lost Princess" is like and unlike dime novel detectives and 
Sherlock Holmes.  Were there "girl detectives" among the dime 
novels?  I had an impression that they were a bit later -- maybe first 
with the Stratemeyer fiction factory, although the Stratemeyer's Carolyn 
Keene's Nancy Drew wasn't the first.  Baum was familiar with the 
Holmes stories, including a parody of Holmes' resurrection in his 
scenario, "The Wizard of Gee Whiz," and a reference to it in one of his 
girl-aviator books.  (Richard Rutter had an article in the "Bugle" some 
years back pointing out the similar use of a clue of which-way-do-the-
bike-tire-tracks-go in one of the Holmes stories and a magazine story 
of Baum's.  It's an interesting example of how close stories can get 
without actually being influenced by each other at all, as Baum's use 
of the gimmick came first, but in such an obscure publication that it's 
very unlikely that Doyle could have seen it.)

Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 20:32:29 +0000 (GMT)
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-02-98
To: "Dave L. Hardenbrook" <DaveH47 at delphi.com>
 
J.L.:
Your Oz-as-history analysis of the delay in publishing _Lost Princess_
makes very good sense to me. (Of course, I'm almost sure that what Baum
really meant by "permitted" was that he'd live that long - which would work
either from the Oz-as-history or Oz-as-literature POV. His health was
definitely failing by the time LP was published, and I think even by the
times of _Scarecrow_ and _Rinkitink_.)
 
I suppose it's possible that Ozma gained some of her enhanced powers from
materials confiscated from Ugu's castle, but I doubt it. In _Glinda_ Baum
is pretty specific that Ozma's magic is of a different sort - fairy magic -
from the technological magic used by Glinda, the Wizard, Ugu, and
presumably Ugu's ancestor. It's true that Ozma seems to use a bit of
technological magic in _Tin Woodman_ to view Mrs. Yoop from Jinjur's
cottage, but that's an isolated instance and may be a specific trick taught
her by one of the others so she can in effect have a portable Magic
Picture. I think that at some point between _Lost Princess_ and _Tin
Woodman_ (or _Glinda_, if, as some of us speculate, the events of that book
actually precede those of _Tin Woodman_) Ozma visited Burzee and received
some training in fairy magic from Lurline or members of her band. (This was
a part of the plot of my _Magic Carpet of Oz_ entry in the Centennial
contest, but that book now seems unlikely to see print.)
 
It's my opinion that Glinda didn't expect much from the search parties, but
sent them out so that she could do her work recreating her magical tools
without one of the others interrupting her every hour or so with frantic
questions. It was sheer luck that one of the parties actually did happen on
the villain.
 
Ruth:
It's not strictly true that all of Baum's last few Oz books are set
entirely in Oz; Kiki Aru travels rather extensively outside Oz in _Magic_,
though his adventures there take up only a couple of chapters.
 
The visit to Thi is really the only extensive Irrelevant Episode in LP,
although the Winkie who couldn't communicate with animals is another short
one.
 
I'm sort of surprised that Wagner would have influenced Baum, considering
the apparent negative reference to "Vogner" in _John Dough_.
 
More on _Lost Princess_:
Despite some flaws, this remains my favorite of the Baum Oz books by a
small margin over _Ozma_ and _Patchwork Girl_. I think part of the reason
it became my favorite as a child was that it was the only Oz book I owned
with a true map in it (_Lucky Bucky_ had a map of sorts, but Neill labeled
it "Not a true map," and it obviously wasn't). Of course, it was
mirror-reversed from the text (since the latter specifies that the Winkie
country is in the west, and the map shows it in the east), but still, it
was a map, and even when I was 8 years old I loved maps. The fact that I
owned it from a very young age may well be why _Ozma_ and PG - which I read
then, but didn't own - fall below it in my estimation, but it's
nevertheless a very good story. There's a fixed goal from the very
beginning (though the two separate search parties don't know until they
meet that they're both on essentially the same quest), and it's an
important one. I've never been able to regard freeing the royal family of
Ev as being particularly important (maybe if we'd been given a chance to
know them a bit better after they were freed?), so the plot of _Ozma_ has
always struck me as "Ozma places herself and friends in deep yogurt and
Billina has to get them out, with a little help from Dorothy." And while
Ojo's quest in PG is interesting, it's ultimately shown to be both
impossible and unnecessary.
 
However, as usual there are odd bits that don't quite work.
 
How could the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman be "taking a course of [Prof.
Wogglebug's] Patent Education Pills" (p 77)? It's been well-established
that neither of them can ingest anything.
 
The passing of the Merry-Go-Round Mountains makes very little sense as
described. In the first place, the method described for swinging out on a
strap wouldn't work, or at least, it wouldn't let you get as far as just
taking a running jump off the edge would. It might work if the swinger
grabbed the strap high enough to get his/her feet off the ground, and
pumped it like a swing until it was going really high, or if the strap were
fastened far out on a limb that extended halfway to the nearest mountain.
But that's not how it's described. And while the humans could possibly do
it, I see no way how any of the animals could. Second, anybody who's ever
played a pinball machine knows that there's no way that all those people
and animals, of widely varying weight and strength, are going to end up
close to each other on the other side. I'd expect the party to end up
distributed fairly uniformly all around the perimeter of the mountains.
Nah, Wiz - you blew this one. From a look at the map it would take about a
day extra to go around the mountains, and since Ozma is just as likely
(from what they know at that time) to be somewhere north or south of the
mountains as west, there's no reason they shouldn't. It's not as if they
were trying to get to a specific goal; they're exploring.
 
The treatment of the Little Pink Bear by the Emerald City party is totally
out of character for most of them. It's true that his pronouncements are
frequently oracular, but it's very hard for me to believe that the Wizard
or Dorothy would be so instantly dismissive of what he said, especially
when they know that there's powerful magic at work. As John mentioned,
Button-Bright could have solved everything if he'd just mentioned that
enchanted peach he'd eaten, but Button-Bright's intelligence seems to dim
anytime Baum needs it to for plot purposes, so we can let that pass. It's
much harder to accept that the Wizard would not have pursued the same line
of questioning he eventually did when they first found Button-Bright in the
hole, and the Bear said that Ozma was in the hole as well, and especially
when he said Ozma wasn't in the hole once Button-Bright was out.
 
There's another inconsistency when the Big Lavender Bear asks the Little
Pink Bear if it's safe for them to join the Emerald City party. Surely that
falls into the class of things that are _going_ to happen, which the BLB
has told Cayke and the Frogman the LPB can't tell about.
 
And I guess that's enough for one post.
 
David Hulan

Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1998 02:15:54 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
Sender: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
 
Lost Princess:
The one thing that definitely struck me as odd when I first read this was
the difference in the number of people assigned to each party. Dorothy has
by far the largest.
 
I was also amused at the beginning of Chapter 6 to learn that the Scarecrow
and Tin Woodman were taking a course of the Wogglebugs pills. The pills
could be ground up into powder and mixed in with the Scarecrow's brains,
but The Tin Woodman has me stumped.
 
One of the few useful tidbits offered in this book is the statement that
Dorothy is one year younger than Betsy and one year older than Trot.
 
Tyler Jones

Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1998 22:50:31 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: Somedays Oz Growls
Sender: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
 
Gee J.L., I don't recall Holmes being confronted by many powerful
magicians. This is, after all, a children's story.  
 
Regards, Bear (:<)

Date: Sun, 06 Sep 1998 16:26:03 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ perspective
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
When I'm rereading an Oz book for these discussions, I try to spot a theme
that runs through all or most of its episodes. Such a theme helps, in my
mind, to unify the separate threads. It may explain, if not justify,
passages which seem boring or extraneous. 

  Identifying a theme for LOST PRINCESS took longer than usual, but I
finally came down on the issue of perspective. The importance of different
points of view shows up in many of Baum's books, but it seems to be nearly
everywhere in this one. 

  Remarks on perspective appear as early as page 22, when Scraps says she
hasn't seen Ozma that fateful morning, but then she hasn't seen anything at
all. Later, the city of Thi seems to move, causing the Wizard to suspect
it's "Just an illusion" [114]; the High Coco-Lorum reveals that the city is
stable, but the land turns around it [130]. And the final chapter shows us
the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow nearly bickering over their favorite
colors [309]. 

  This theme of perspective makes sense of Chapter Ten, which is mostly an
argument among the animals unrelated to their quest. Baum shows how they
champion their different tastes. Even when their talk does focus on finding
the villain, he invokes perspective: the Lion rumbles, "The growl is of
importance only to you," and Toto insists, "to prevent a dog from
growling...is just as wicked, in my opinion, as stealing all the magic in
Oz" [148-9]. (If only Toto truly "seldom said anything" in this book [82],
I'd like him a lot more.)

  A lot of the spells cast in LOST PRINCESS depend on deceptive
appearances. The Lavender Bear's magic consists of conjuring up images. Ugu
has an army of ghost soldiers [268]. Thi is surrounded by what looks like a
wall but is insubstantial [122], while Ugu has its converse, an invisible
wall [285], and a wall that's impassable from one side but yields to a pin
from the other [264]. The Merry-Go-Round Mountains look rocky, but are
rubbery [108]. The people of Herku look "dreadfully lean and thin," but are
very strong [166]. 

  Both sides of the struggle can be tripped up by the limits of their
points of view. On page 236 Scraps is confident nothing can hurt her, but
on 261 she's on the run from Ugu's fire. Meanwhile, Baum implies that Ugu
thought his fire would be impossible to quench; as Glinda's protege, the
Wizard has the knowledge to quench it. 

  Ugu the Shoemaker's main failing, Baum writes, is his self-centered
perspective. The first thing we learn about Ugu is that "he didn't suspect,
in the least, that he was wicked. . . . His ambition blinded him to the
rights of others and he imagined anyone else would act just as he did if
anyone else happened to be as clever as himself" [241]. (A psychological
analysis might cast his wickedness as a response to desertion by his father
and having to work hard [242]; in TIK-TOK Ann Soforth has the same
complaints, and perhaps Baum himself felt such resentment after his
family's fortune disappeared.) 

  Baum makes nice use of shifts in point of view in narrating LOST
PRINCESS. To cross the Merry-Go-Round Mountains we stay with Dorothy: first
watching three of her companions go over, then experiencing her trip, and
finally awaiting the rest of the party [105-7]. When the Lavender Bear
shows Ugu's image to Cayke and the Frogman, we readers can recognize
Glinda's Great Book of Records, but since those characters don't know the
Book the narrator doesn't identify it [213]. And the story of the golden
peach-pit challenges us to use knowledge only we (and Button-Bright) have
to find Ozma before Dorothy and the Wizard. 

  This kaleidoscope of perspectives and illusions doesn't mean truth is all
relative, however. Baum highlights a few fonts of truth. The Truth Pond is
one, of course. It forces the Frogman to acknowledge that his status among
the Yips is based mostly on his unique appearance (though Baum also says
he's "adventurous" and "unusually intelligent" [40-2], and he proves to
have those qualities). Refusing to bathe in the Truth Pond allows Cayke to
maintain her "pleasing illusion" that the Frogman is very wise [186, 207]. 

  The Great Book of Records and the Magic Picture are two more sources of
truth in Oz; Ugu therefore steals them to ensure his plan "to become the
greatest magician in Oz" can proceed [242-3]. 

  Another true voice is the Little Pink Bear's. Twice children think he's
"crazy" [257, 296], but the bear king proves correct: "He never makes a
mistake!" [298] The solution to the final mystery comes only when the
Wizard figures out how Ugu's peachy illusion and changing perspectives have
masked the little bear's true information.

  Given that emphasis on perspective, it's appropriate that Ugu halts
Ozma's rescuers by turning their world upside-down [274]. But in Oz
adventures, Dorothy is a champion of truth; she's not always right on the
facts but always clear on priorities [154, 159]. Representing the side of
right, Dorothy soon has the castle right-side-up again. After that, Ugu has
lost the battle, and knows it. But only when he changes his perspective on
life [309, 312] does he become truly happy.
  Whew!
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 06:26:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ozmama at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-07-98
 
 
John Bell.  I like your analysis, but would like to point out an alternative 
theme or, perhaps, an additional one.  I think you're right about point of 
view, but would like to suggest the classic Baum theme of Appearance
vs. Reality.
 
<<   A lot of the spells cast in LOST PRINCESS depend on deceptive
 appearances. The Lavender Bear's magic consists of conjuring up images. Ugu
 has an army of ghost soldiers [268]. Thi is surrounded by what looks like a
 wall but is insubstantial [122], while Ugu has its converse, an invisible
 wall [285], and a wall that's impassable from one side but yields to a pin
 from the other [264]. The Merry-Go-Round Mountains look rocky, but are
 rubbery [108]. The people of Herku look "dreadfully lean and thin," but are
 very strong [166].  >>
 
Add to these the Truth Pond and Ozma in a golden peach pit, and you'll also 
have a case for stating that Appearance vs. Reality is a major theme in this 
book. It's certainly one of Baum's favorite themes.  Things are not as they 
appear to be. Thi seems to be in one place, but then seems to be elsewhere. 
The Little Pink Bear seems to be wrong when he tells the group where Ozma 
is, but he's right. Ugu appears to have been punished by being transformed 
into a dove, but it turns out that he likes the new form. --Robin

Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 07:39:02 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-07-98
 
In Re: "The Lost Princess of Oz",
     I find that I like all the various animals less than I did after I
read this book. They, all of them, have very little sympathy for anyone
other than themselves.  Toto had a legitimate cause for being upset and
could have used a little support.  If he thought he had perhaps he
wouldn't have whined so much.  I ask you, in that picture on page 149,
could anyone not feel sorry for him?  Even Dorothy (his mistress)
dismisses his loss of bark as relatively minor.  Having said that, I
also prefer him to be seen and not heard. He's a little too voluble for
me.

     For that matter, the humans also all seem to be fairly blasé about
other's (of any species) difficulties. I don't particularly like
Dorothy's experiments on the others while they were sleeping. Seems that
she could have gotten them in all kinds of difficulties.  She could have
tested the belt on inanimate objects.  

     In chapter 13, page 181,
     "The water was deliciously cool and grateful to his thick, rough skin"  

     I like the wording, but it really doesn't make a heck of a lot of
sense, does it?  Would the water being "grateful" to his skin be an
obsolete usage?  For that matter, as one who (as all high school
students were at the time) was forced to kill and dissect a frog, I
don't recall that it had particularly thick and rough skin.  Rather
smooth and elastic.

     Finally, I find Cayke to be a damned attractive woman and wouldn't
mind seeing more of her.
 
Bob Spark

Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 13:16:53 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ alternatives
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
[Parts of this message were sent 9/5, but disappeared into deepest
cyberspace. I'm assuming they won't circle back; if they do, sorry for the
redundancy.]
 
About LOST PRINCESS Atticus wrote:
<<The belt definitely assumes deus-ex-machina status, in my mind, and could
easily have been omitted by, say, having Scraps' chandelier contain some
sort of lever to reverse the room>>
 
I think that would just transfer the convenient deity from one machine (the
Belt) to another (the chandelier). It seems important that Dorothy and her
party actually bring the power to vanquish Ugu; otherwise, they'd stumble
across it as they stumble across so many other things. But with little
preparation for Dorothy using the Belt--indeed, Baum goes out of his way to
make us *not* expect that--it doesn't feel like a clean victory. 

  Finding some way to snag the Wizard's tools would indeed be a good
alternative. To satisfy most young readers, there would still have to be a
way for Dorothy and the kids to come up with the solution. 
 
Ruth Berman wrote:
<<it would have been difficult to use the Royal Historian presentation and
at the same time give credit to the youngster who suggested the plot --
Baum felt that giving credit was the more important, evidently.>>
 
A good point, though Baum had found ways of balancing this before. In
SCARECROW, for instance, he starts talking about readers' demands to bring
Trot to Oz, but credits the Scarecrow for managing that. And in PATCHWORK
GIRL, he both acknowledges the little girl who thought of the radio
telegraph and tells us the Shaggy Man is actually using it. 
 
Ruth Berman asked:
<<Were there "girl detectives" among the dime novels?>>
 
Yes, there was Belle Boyd, the Girl Detective, who was actually a young
woman, as well as Lotta, the Young Lady Detective; Lady Kate, the Dashing
Female Detective; Mademoiselle Lucy, the French Lady Detective; Wild Madge,
the Female Government Detective; Nell Blondin, the Lady Ferret; and several
others, appearing only once per year or so. As you can tell from these
names, a distaff detective was still a novelty for writers and readers.

  One fact that probably smoothed the acceptance of these fictional females
is that Allan Pinkerton had employed real women as operatives in the 1860s.
When he later wrote up his cases for the popular press (or said he
did--since his office records had burned in the Chicago fire, no one can
prove he was embellishing), he highlighted these women's contributions.
Reportedly he also had a long affair with the head of his female
department, and that was one reason why his sons shut it down after they
took over the firm.

  But back to Oz...
 
Dave Hulan wrote:
<<I suppose it's possible that Ozma gained some of her enhanced powers from
materials confiscated from Ugu's castle, but I doubt it. In _Glinda_ Baum
is pretty specific that Ozma's magic is of a different sort - fairy magic -
from the technological magic used by Glinda, the Wizard, Ugu, and
presumably Ugu's ancestor. It's true that Ozma seems to use a bit of
technological magic in _Tin Woodman_>>
 
I was indeed thinking of the elaborate set-up in TIN WOODMAN. It's unlike
the magic Ozma does elsewhere, relying on objects and potions of the sort
that can be transferred from one lab to another. On her peace mission in
GLINDA Ozma does seem to be deliberately confining herself to the magic she
comes by naturally. 
 
Dave also wrote:
<<It's my opinion that Glinda didn't expect much from the search parties,
but sent them out so that she could do her work recreating her magical
tools without one of the others interrupting her every hour or so with
frantic questions.>>
 
Ha ha--what a picture! 
  Dorothy: Glinda, do you have any news yet?
  Nick Chopper: What sort of heartless person would do such a thing?!
  Jack Pumpkinhead: Does this mean I'm an orphan?
  Dorothy: The Wizard an' I should just march 'cross the Desert and make
the Nomes give us back Ozma, shouldn't we? 
  Toto: When you have a minute, Glinda, would you look for my growl?
  Trot: Shall I go to the lake and call for Queen Aquareine? 
  Dorothy: What if I took the Cowardly Lion an' looked in the most
dang'rous forests in the Gillikin Country?
  Cowardly Lion: What if you *don't*?
  Betsy: Would it be all right if I stayed home and looked around the
palace one more time?
  Tik-tok: Sor-cer-ess, are we both-er-ing you?
  Button-Bright: Is it lunchtime? 
 
What do folks think of Cayke the Cookie Cook? She's not a fully-baked
character for me. Though Neill pictures her as a young woman, Baum seems to
have had someone older in mind. He calls her "the little dried-up Cookie
Cook" [178], adjectives he usually reserves for the Wizard. If Cayke's an
adult, rather than someone Baum meant young readers to identify with, that
helps to explain her flat characterization.

  At the end of LOST PRINCESS Cayke is still in the Emerald City "and
seemed in no hurry to go back to the Country of the Yips" [310]. We know
from succeeding books that the Frogman became a big frog in the big pond of
the Emerald City, but where do folks think Cayke ended up?

  Some critics have questioned how a dishpan can affect the quality of
cookies. That doesn't concern me: by definition magic doesn't necessarily
conform to logic or physical laws. I am intrigued, however, by how the Yips
tell Cayke they like her cookies "except when they are burned on the
bottom" [49]. Does this imply that even when she had her Dishpan her
cookies weren't always perfect? Or are they referring to the batch of
cookies she'd baked the morning after the theft, which "burned up in the
oven!" [63]? 

  What's the origin of the Magic Dishpan? Cayke says, "It belonged to my
mother and to all my grandmothers [don't most of us have only two?], since
the beginning of time. It is, I believe, the very oldest thing in all the
Yip Country" [62]. Ugu's researches reveal more of the Dishpan's powers--it
can grow and "transport him in an instant to any place he wished to go
within the borders of the Land of Oz"--but not its origin [243]. Connecting
those dots, I envision a magician in the prehistory of Oz, when the land
was wracked by battles among witches, creating the Dishpan and using it to
transport family and loved ones as far as possible within Oz. In a safe,
secluded corner of the Winkie Country they founded the community of the
Yips. (The same magician may have planted the world's only skosh there
[41-2].) Eschewing magic and the dangerous world below, the Yips gradually
lost their knowledge of the Dishpan's powers. Or maybe not. 

  (I just read Jeff Freedman's MAGIC DISHPAN OF OZ, from Emerald City
Press. It posits that the Dishpan works only when it's soapy clean, and
that both the Frogman and Cayke went back to Yip Country.)
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 22:47:26 -0700
From: ozbot <ozbot at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-07-98
 
Thanks to the Lost Princess theme of perception by JNBell!  Great work and
that really helped me to make sense of this.
 
One thing that continually strikes me as odd is the Wizard's attitude and
actions in the LPoO.  His humbug nature shines through, and he actually
acts as quite a bit of a jerk, I'm afraid.  Although I don't have the book
in front of me, I'm struck by the fact that the Wizard seemed distraught to
the point of misjudgement, fearful of his life and himself without magic,
and was willing to hide behind the bravery of the girls and the animals
(especially when crossing the Merry go Round mountains.) 
 
Perhaps another theme is that of loss and regain.  Obviously, Ozma is lost
to her friends and country and Cayke loses her dishpan, but Ugu, the
Wizard, Toto, the Frogman, and Scraps lose different things in different
ways.  Others are threatened with loss, Dorothy with her friend, Big
Lavendar Bear with the faith in Little Pink, and the Irrevelant Episode
Lands with fragile hold of political power.  Is it any wonder, then, that
Button Bright, the one most comfortable and mercurial in his own "losings"
of himself is the one that holds the key to the main Loss of All:  Ozma?
 
ozbot
Danny Wall

Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1998 18:21:42 +0000 (GMT)
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-04 & 07-98
 
9/4:
Atticus:
_Lost Princess_ was one of the first Oz books I read, long before I read
_Ozma_. Well, not long in absolute terms,but long compared to the order in
which I read the books; _Ozma_ was one of the last Oz books I read as a
child. It didn't happen to be one I was given, and the lady from whom I
borrowed most of the ones I didn't own didn't have that one (or _Land_). (I
didn't read _Captain Salt_, _Handy Mandy_, _Wonder City_, _Scalawagons_,
_Hidden Valley_, or _Merry-Go-Round_ until I was an adult; of course, the
last wasn't published until I was an adult.) Because of that, Dorothy's
having to learn about how to use the Magic Belt didn't bother me. Rather, I
was surprised when I finally read _Ozma_ that Dorothy was able to do all
kinds of things with the belt without a learning curve. That actually
seemed much less plausible.
 
True that the Thi episode is pointless, but then Irrelevant Episodes are
highly characteristic of Oz books in general. _Lost Princess_ is actually
less burdened with them than most of the books. Neill's failure to
illustrate a mechanical dragon is unfortunate, but that's how it goes.
 
In short, while LP is far from a flawless book, it's still my favorite of
the Baums. I could pick equivalent nits with any of the others.
 
J.L.:
Interesting comments on the various societies depicted in LP. As far as the
Yips are concerned, they seem to be happy enough letting the Frogman settle
their disputes, so whether he's inherently wiser than they are or not, he
must be making good decisions most of the time. (The same could be said for
the Wizard in the first book.) Perhaps what Baum was getting at in both
cases is that in the normal course of things it doesn't take extraordinary
intelligence to rule well - just common sense, good will, and a willingness
to make decisions when necessary.
 
Much the same seems to be true of the High Coco-Lorum of Thi; if he were
misruling the Thists they'd soon cease to accept his rulings, but the
citizens of Thi seem to be happy enough and not even to realize that
they're being ruled. Unless you postulate that they're all really stupid,
which doesn't seem to be the case, this is an indication that the High
Coco-Lorum must be ruling them with a light hand and settling their
disputes in a manner perceived as fair.
 
The Herkus are another story: I could easily see Ozma determining that they
had to be taken in hand once she got back to the EC and heard about them. I
can't really reconcile slavery with Ozma's government. (Maybe this is a
subject for another addition to the Oz Apocrypha?)
 
9/7:
Tyler:
I think the large numbers in Dorothy's party come about more by accident
than intent. The original idea was to have just the three girls and the
Wizard, with the sawhorse to pull the wagon, but characters kept adding
themselves to the party.
 
J.L.:
I dunno, I rather liked Toto's speaking a good deal in this book. Aside
from the much later _Magical Mimics_ it's the only book where he says
anything much.
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 07:38:34 -0700
From: plgnyc <plgnyc at earthlink.net>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Now that everyone on the digest (well, not everyone, but lots of digest
readers) has "digested" LOST PRINCESS OF OZ (is that pun worthy of the
Wogglebug?), I was wondering what people thought of Jeff Freedman's THE
MAGIC DISHPAN OF OZ.  As most of you can guess from the title, this book
definitely relates to LOST PRINCESS.  Any thoughts or comments?
 
- Peter Glassman
  Books of Wonder

Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 09:19:24 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Robin Olderman: Interesting point that appearance/perception vs. 
reality is an important theme in a lot of Baum's work.  There are 
several books where he uses the magical barrier that becomes 
ineffective when the traveller is blindfolded or disappears after the 
traveller gets past it.
 
Bob Spark: "Grateful" in the sense of "affording pleasure or 
contentment" is not an obsolete usage (you'll find it in current 
dictionaries), but probably it's a good deal less common than in 
Baum's time. "Thick, rough skin" -- you're probably right that Baum 
was simply giving an incorrect description, but it's at least possible 
that a frog grown to giant size would have skin much thicker and 
rougher than a frog of ordinary size?
 
J.L. Bell: Enjoyed David Hulan's idea of a beset Glinda organizing 
search parties to stop the participants from interrupting her, and 
enjoyed your extrapolation of how frantic the scene might have been 
without the dispersal. // Cayke's Magic Dishpan can't very well have 
belonged to "all" her grandmothers, as the paternal grandmothers 
presumably didn't own it, but if it's assumed that "all her 
grandmothers" means the maternal line and counts greats-to-the-nth-
grannies as grannies, then the line makes sense.  Your thought that 
the Yip community was founded by the magician (a woman, 
presumably -- maybe named Yip? -- with a husband named Harburg?) 
who invented the Dishpan and gave it its transportational magic seems 
plausible).
 
Danny Wall: Your suggestion that Button Bright who's always getting 
lost himself is the right person to find the key to finding a lost Ozma is 
ingenious.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 22:42:23 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ commentary
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
About LOST PRINCESS Robin Olderman wrote:
<<I think you're right about point of view, but would like to suggest the
classic Baum theme of Appearance vs. Reality.>>
 
I agree; perspective and deceptive illusions are closely related in this
book. Throughout the quest for Ozma we keep learning that if one takes a
different view of something (rubber mountains, golden peach pit, girl
soldiers) one sees its reality is different from how it first appeared. 
 
Danny Wall wrote:
<<Perhaps another theme is that of loss and regain.>>
 
Loss is definitely a motif Baum wanted us to pick up on. In addition to the
title LOST PRINCESS, he has chapters titled "A Terrible Loss," "Toto Loses
Something," and "Button-Bright Loses Himself."  
 
Danny Wall also wrote:
<<the Wizard seemed distraught to the point of misjudgement, fearful of his
life and himself without magic, and was willing to hide behind the bravery
of the girls and the animals (especially when crossing the Merry go Round
mountains.) >>
 
Indeed, the Wizard's shaken to his core by the loss of his magic; he faces
the prospect of being a humbug once more. But I don't think that's why he's
so fearful compared to the children. I suspect he grasps the danger to Oz
more fully than Dorothy, who's mainly worried about Ozma herself. He's the
grown-up, after all. He's the one making sure the search party has enough
resources, as when he brings the blankets and leather straps across the
mountains. And in the end he's the one who figures out where Ozma is.
 
Tyler Jones wrote:
<<The one thing that definitely struck me as odd when I first read this was
the difference in the number of people assigned to each party. Dorothy has
by far the largest. . . . One of the few useful tidbits offered in this
book is the statement that Dorothy is one year younger than Betsy and one
year older than Trot.>>
 
Wouldn't everybody want to be with Dorothy? After all, not only is she
nearly the most charming little girl in the world, but she always has the
best adventures. The real quandary for me would be whom to follow if
Dorothy and Button-Bright were in different search parties--whose luck is
stronger? Probably I'd soon lose Button-Bright, and Dorothy would end up
finding and traveling with him.

  Baum's statement about the girls' ages and his many references to Trot as
little seem to have cued Eric Shanower to draw the three at different
heights--a welcome differentiation. In TIK-TOK, Baum wrote that Betsy and
Dorothy were the same height. Might Betsy have let herself age a bit after
coming to Oz?

  Also on page 18, Baum's words make a telling distinction between how
Betsy and Trot came to live in Ozma's palace. Betsy had to "seek refuge
with Ozma," implying she had no other home. Trot, on the other hand, "had
been invited" into Oz; I read that as implying she did have a choice,
between homes in the Emerald City and back in California. 
 
Richard Bauman wrote:
<<I don't recall Holmes being confronted by many powerful magicians. This
is, after all, a children's story.>>
 
An author can write a mystery tale within a magical world. She or he just
needs to lay out some parameters at the outset: what are the limits of
magic, who could have done the crime, what are the clues? Atticus wrote
about how he expected that sort of story. So will some children who read
the Books of Wonder flyer calling LOST PRINCESS a "mystery." But that's not
what Baum gave us. 
 
Bob Sparks wrote:
<<in that picture on page 149, could anyone not feel sorry for [Toto]?>>
 
A sad little doggy indeed, but it doesn't look like any Toto I know!
(Compare to page 83, for instance.)
 
Bob Sparks also wrote:
<<In chapter 13, page 181, "The water was deliciously cool and grateful to
his [the Frogman's] thick, rough skin"  

     I like the wording, but it really doesn't make a heck of a lot of
sense, does it?  Would the water being "grateful" to his skin be an
obsolete usage?  For that matter,...I don't recall that it had particularly
thick and rough skin.>>
 
A secondary meaning of "grateful" was akin to "gratifying." And perhaps the
Frogman's skin was rougher than usual because he hadn't had his bath yet.  
 
Jeremy Steadman wrote:
<<As the first non-WWoO Oz book I ever read, I ought to have fond memories
of [LOST PRINCESS].>>
 
I had the opposite prejudice. LOST PRINCESS was the *last* Baum Oz book I
read because Rand McNally had let the paperback go out of stock. I
therefore had to save up and send away for a hardcover. And when it
arrived, I knew that I'd never again read a Baum Oz novel for the first
time. That, alas, laid a sour feeling behind my first reading. 
 
Miscellaneous LOST PRINCESS observations:

  My knowledge of the history of teddy bears (besides my own) is fuzzy, but
that name derives from Teddy Roosevelt. Baum clearly makes a connection
between the stuffed bears of Bear Center and American kids' toys [218]. For
Baum to have a village of stuffed bears could be analogous to an Oz book
today having a Cabbage Patch Kid Town or perhaps even a Beanie
Babies-ville. 

  On page 218, the Lavender Bear says, "A King isn't required to stay at
home forever, and is he takes a notion to travel, whose business is it but
his own?" At this time in American history, constitutional scholars were
still debating whether the President could leave the country while in
office. None did so until Wilson went to Europe for the post-WW1 treaty
talks. The teddy-bearish President Taft had even avoided going to his
vacation home in Canada. 

  The Frogman's paean to female soldiers ("They are more brave than men and
they have better nerves"--page 266) seems especially provocative when we
recall that in 1917, the year LOST PRINCESS was published, the U.S. entered
WW1.
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 07:06:30 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-11-98
 
>  My knowledge of the history of teddy bears (besides my own)
>  is fuzzy, but that name derives from Teddy Roosevelt.
 
     I am operating from memory so don't place too much credence in this
but, I have heard that the "Teddy Bear" name came from an incident when
Teddy Roosevelt (an avid outdoorsman) was hunting bears.  The guide
pointed out a female with a cub for Roosevelt to shoot but he refused,
not wanting to orphan the cub.  The papers got wind of this story
(probably from Roosevelt's spin doctors) and the name was perpetuated.
 
Bob Spark

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 09:12:52 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
[These comments, except for the last one, refer back several days.  
The earlier copy emailed to Dave Hardenbrook seems to have 
vanished in cyberspace.]
 
David Hulan: I seem to recall a comment from a "Bugle" suggesting 
that the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman could take Professor 
Wogglebug's Education pills by putting them inside themselves.  
(Whether they'd have any effect that way is another question?)
 
Bear: Holmes doesn't meet anyone who turns out to be a powerful 
magician, but he meets several who seem to be powerfully magic at 
first (Hound of the Baskervilles, Sussex Vampire, Devil's Foot Root), 
and presumably that's at least some guide to how he would have 
acted with actuals.  In fact, the late Dean Dickensheet took this notion 
to extremes one time, in a very short Holmes-in-Oz story, in which 
Holmes is called in by Ozma to investigate something or other, and, 
after he has concentrated a moment, the entire country and most of 
the inhabitants vanish, leaving behind a flat grey plain and some 
puzzled mortals.  Holmes explains apologetically that it's probably his
fault, as he always begins an investigation by eliminating the 
impossible.  (And, of course, there was my "Sherlock Holmes in Oz" 
story, which you may have seen in "Oziana" originally, or reprinted in 
"The Game's Afoot," ed. Marvin Kaye, published by St. Martin's Press.)  
Dean's story originally appeared in one of Bruce Pelz's fanzines, and I 
reprinted it in one of the three anthologies I did of Holmesiana from sf 
fanzines.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 23:49:22 +0000 (GMT)
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-09 & 11-98
 
9/9:
Bob Spark:
>     Finally, I find Cayke to be a damned attractive woman and wouldn't
>mind seeing more of her.
 
She's attractive as Neill draws her, and her personality is pleasant
enough, but Baum's physical descriptions of her indicate that she's nothing
like as good-looking as she's drawn.
 
J.L.:
>I think that would just transfer the convenient deity from one machine (the
>Belt) to another (the chandelier). It seems important that Dorothy and her
>party actually bring the power to vanquish Ugu; otherwise, they'd stumble
>across it as they stumble across so many other things. But with little
>preparation for Dorothy using the Belt--indeed, Baum goes out of his way to
>make us *not* expect that--it doesn't feel like a clean victory.
 
Agreed. If Baum had shown us Dorothy working out how to use the Belt,
instead of having her tell us (and the rest of her team) about it after
she'd used it, that part of the story would have worked better.
 
Liked your elaboration of what Glinda might have gone through if she hadn't
sent out the search parties!
 
I think Cayke ended up going back to the Yip country (probably via Magic
Belt); unlike the Frogman, she seems the sort of person who'd enjoy a stay
in the EC, but would then want to return to the people she's known all her
life. This is just my opinion, though.
 
And I've always thought of the cookies that were burned on the bottom as
ones that Cayke baked after she lost the dishpan - maybe not the ones that
"burned up in the oven," but a replacement batch that still didn't come out
well. She does mention having made three batches after losing the dishpan,
and there might have been even more that she doesn't mention.
 
9/11:
Peter Glassman:
It's been a while since I read _Magic Dishpan_, but I remember liking it
better the first time I read it than the second. It seemed a little too
much like what it probably started as: a story a father told his children
including them as characters in an Oz story, which he then decided to write
down and see if he could get published. I rate it toward the lower end of
the ECP originals - better than _Magic Chest_, _Speckled Rose_, or
_Lavender Bear_, but not as good as any of the others. (The illustrations
also vie with _Queen Ann_ for the worst of all the ECP books, in my
opinion.)
 
Incidentally, I ordered the BoW _Lost Princess_ on 8/11 and haven't
received it yet. Has it been delayed?
 
Ruth:
 >Your thought that
>the Yip community was founded by the magician (a woman,
>presumably -- maybe named Yip? -- with a husband named Harburg?)
>who invented the Dishpan and gave it its transportational magic seems
>plausible).
 
*G*R*O*A*N* :-)
 
J.L.:
>An author can write a mystery tale within a magical world. She or he just
>needs to lay out some parameters at the outset: what are the limits of
>magic, who could have done the crime, what are the clues?
 
Indeed. To anyone who's a fan of both fantasy and mystery I highly
recommend Daniel Hood's series that starts with _Fanuilh_ and goes on with
_Wizard's Heir_ and a couple more volumes. Excellent combination of the
two, imho. The world in question resembles Renaissance Italy more than
anything else, but with magic.
 
Stuffed bears antedate the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, but they became
popular in the US about that time (I believe they originated in Germany)
and his name was attached to them, and then spread back across the Pond. I
know that because in _When We Were Very Young_ Milne refers to a Pooh-like
bear as "Teddy," and of course Pooh himself is originally introduced as
"Edward Bear" in _Winnie-the-Pooh_. (In those days, "Ted" was a usual
nickname for "Edward" as well as "Theodore." May still be, for all I know.
"Theodore Sturgeon" was born Edward Hamilton Waldo, but was called "Ted,"
and later took the pen name and eventually, IIRC, took it as his legal name
as well.)
 
David Hulan

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 21:06:39 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ lines
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Ruth Berman wrote:
<<There are several books where [Baum] uses the magical barrier that
becomes ineffective when the traveller is blindfolded or disappears after
the  traveller gets past it.>>
 
In writing my first book-length Oz manuscript, I realized I'd included two
episodes in which the heroes, faced with a seemingly impassable barrier,
use logic to identify a way it *might* be crossed, screw up their courage,
and press forward. In both cases the barrier turns out to be partly
illusive--after the hero's on the other side. I worried that pattern was
too repetitive. Then I recalled many such moments in Baum's books, and
decided such episodes underscore a major theme of WIZARD and most of its
sequels: You have to move if you want to get anywhere. [Though cf.
Button-Bright, LOST PRINCESS, p. 158]
 
Comments on other individual lines in LOST PRINCESS--

  58: "There is not so much [tin in Oz] as there is of gold and silver,"
Baum says, implying that tin's more valuable. Yet Corporal Waddle's gun
barrel is made of tin [199]. And in "Ozma and the Little Wizard" in LIL
WIZARD STORIES, the Wizard speaks of tin as a baser metal. This seems to be
a cute idea Baum didn't really commit himself to.

  59: Wiljon's rejoinder, "Nor have I seen a copper-plated lobster," is one
of my favorites in the whole series. 

  71: Ojo says, "Only wicked people steal." Sanctimonious words from the
Emerald City's only ex-con!

  143: Hank says, "Once I lost my bray, so that I couldn't call to Betsy to
let her know I was hungry. That was before I could talk, you know." It must
have been within the short period between when TIK-TOK says Betsy met Hank
on board ship and their arrival in Oz--perhaps during the TIK-TOK
adventure. 

  On this same page the Woozy says, "I don't care for such things [as
growls] myself." Finding out the true nature of his growl in PATCHWORK GIRL
seems to have soured him on all growls.

  200: Baum has Corporal Waddles say that "light lavender...is, of course,
second-cousin to royal purple." That phrasing may be germane to figuring
out how he meant us to read Zeb's remarks about family relations in DOROTHY
& WIZARD. 

  304: Does anyone recall if "the pretty lake which was but a short
distance from Ozma's home" was mentioned in the series before this? It
appears on the TIK-TOK (and LOST PRINCESS) maps, but those maps might have
prompted this mention in Baum's text, rather than the other way around.
 
Peter Glassman wrote:
<<I was wondering what people thought of Jeff Freedman's THE
MAGIC DISHPAN OF OZ.  As most of you can guess from the title, this book
definitely relates to LOST PRINCESS.  Any thoughts or comments?>>
 
I was impressed by Freedman's word-picture of Scraps, Nick, and the
Scarecrow when we first see them, and the preceding depiction of a paranoid
human/animal society. A much more ominous welcome to Oz than usual, it
caught my attention well. And it's always nice to see Planetty again.  

  I was neutral on Freedman's use of the two sisters, one much younger than
the usual American visitor to Oz. While their arrival is in some ways
novel, I couldn't shake a suspicion he was writing for and about his own
daughters.

  The element of MAGIC DISHPAN I didn't cotton to was the allegorical
villains. Using them made the tale more preachy than most Oz books. Even
when Baum gives us a lesson through Ugu, Mombi, Blinkie, or other
antagonists, they have distinct personalities and human motivations. 

  The art, while more cartoony than the Neill/Shanower/Kramer style I
admire, was effective in its way. Alas, the quotation marks didn't curl--a
pet peeve for me of the same magnitude that Kabumpo's a pet for King
Pompus. 

  Peter, were Sir Dynar of Regalia (an anagram of Randy) and Kabina
(heretofore unknown sister to Kabumpo) replacements for Thompson's
copyrighted PURPLE PRINCE characterizations?
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 18:37:46 -0700
From: ozbot <ozbot at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-11-98
 
Ruth said: 
> Danny Wall: Your suggestion that Button Bright who's always getting 
> lost himself is the right person to find the key to finding a lost Ozma is 
> ingenious.
> 
 
Thanks!  <blush>
 
and JBell:
(the Wizard losing his magic)
>But I don't think that's why he's
> so fearful compared to the children. I suspect he grasps the danger to Oz
> more fully than Dorothy, who's mainly worried about Ozma herself. 
 
Me:
I guess I'm always surprised at an undercurrent of the Wizard's appearances
that he's often not the most trustworthy or at least, not the most
forthright character.  Such stuff as his intial appearances, mysterious
role he played between Ozma and Mombi, etc.
Witness the blankets and leather straps when he crosses the MGRMnts.  My
first thought was that Wizard was trying to get some "padding" and
protection for himself.  
 
ozbot
Danny Wall

Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 00:42:21 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
Sender: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
 
_Magic Dishpan_:
This was a pretty good story. Author Jeff Freedman continues the
Neill-esque tradition of taking the color scheme of each quadrant to the
extreme: Absolutely everything is yellow (or whatever color), even the skin
color of the citizens. The lone exception is Yellow Brick Roads in every
country.
 
The idea that the Magic Dishpan can only operate when it is clean is an
interesting one. Most magic items have rules regarding their use, and it
looks like the Dishpan  is no exception.
 
I was particulary struck by a comment about the Gillikin country being less
civilized than the other quadrants of Oz. Baum frequently mentioned this,
although he never went into detail. Later authors ignored this statement,
so it's good to see it coming out again.
 
We see that the dragon of copyright law has reared its ugly head. The
Magicians must attack Randy and Planetty instead of Joe King of Uptown, who
would be the obvious target for taking over the land of the Gillikins. The
same applies to "Kabina" the elephant, as opposed to Kabumpo.
 
I was a little concerned at a new power given to Glinda's Great Book of
Records. You can now ask it questions, and it will flip to the relevant
section and give you information on it. Another inconsistancy was the fact
that the Magicians' powers did not seem to affect animals, until the very
end, when Kabina fell under the spell of one of them. That particular
magician claimed to be the most powerful, so that may explain it.
 
The ending was not quite as traditional as most, but it came close. Ozma
and her magic belt were not used, but aside from one small part, the whole
episode was wrapped up by a traditional Oz character and a piece of
ultra-powerful magic.
 
Overall, and despite my nit-picking, I really enjoyed the tale, as it is
one of the better stories out there. The two girls were very likeable, and
the idea of a cadre of magicians, each with his own power of mischief, is a
terrific plot device. I especially liked the fact that there were no IE's.
This is not to say that IE's are bad (in moderation), but it's nice to be
able to read a story that's does not depend on them. If I reviewed BOW
books, I'd give this one three and a half stars. 
 
Tyler Jones

Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 02:25:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-11-98
 
Lost Princess. Hm. I can't recall whether this is one of the ones that we had
or not. I think that it was not. I also recall it not being one of my
favorites, but can't really say why not. Rereading it, it comes across as a
much better "story" than I remember it being. Certainly, it was disquieting to
have the "worst" happen before the story even starts and spend the rest of the
book trying to put it right. I also liked Mr Bell"s interpretation. It does
hang together. And I also like David Hulan's suggestion of Glinda sending out
the search parties in order to get people out of her hair. 
 
Danny Wall's comments about the wizard's poor judgement in this book, to me,
tend to point out that one of the things that you can count on in an Oz
adventure is that the "grown-up" characters are not superior to the child
characters. Either one has just as good of a chance as the other of comming up
with the clue which will solve the problem, or find a way out of the
difficulty. This is probably one reason why the books continue to be favorites
of children through the generations. (And points out the contrast between
Baum's work and Lewis Carroll's, where just about every character Alice meets
is a "grown-up", who, however witless, ineffectual or bizarre, never lets her
forget it. I hated the Alice books.)
 
All in all, while I enjoyed the reread, I haven't a lot to say about the book.
Sorry.

Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 14:29:26 -0500
From: "R. M. Atticus Gannaway" <atty242 at mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-09-98
 
DAVID HULAN:
 
>In short, while LP is far from a flawless book, it's still my favorite of
>the Baums. I could pick equivalent nits with any of the others.
 
While there are certainly flaws in Baum's other books, in my opinion LP
contains one of the most drastic inconsistencies ("Duh, how does this Belt
thingy work?") and some of the most dramatic deviations from character
(pointed out by Bob Spark and others) in the First Fourteen.
 
Atticus
* * *
 
"...[T]here is something else: the faith of those despised and endangered
that they are not merely the sum of damages done to them."
 
Visit my webpage at

Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 16:36:26 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ b/w art
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Bob Sparks wrote:
<<I have heard that the "Teddy Bear" name came from an incident when Teddy
Roosevelt (an avid outdoorsman) was hunting bears.  The guide pointed out a
female with a cub for Roosevelt to shoot but he refused, not wanting to
orphan the cub.  The papers got wind of this story (probably from
Roosevelt's spin doctors) and the name was perpetuated.>>
 
I've read that account, too. (Roosevelt was a marketer's dream; he also
came out with "Good to the last drop!" at the Maxwell House hotel.) Two
early literary spin-offs of the hunting story were the ROOSEVELT BEARS
picture books and Baum's "Why Does Our Teddy Hunt the Bear?" poem reprinted
in this year's OZ-STORY. I also recall seeing a very early silent newsreel
about the cub incident--so early that its "dramatic recreation" was
considered valid journalism. But I don't know in what year it occurred, and
whether it simply gave a new name to stuffed bears or actually initiated
the craze in America. 
 
Danny Wall wrote:
<<I'm always surprised at an undercurrent of the Wizard's appearances that
he's often not the most trustworthy or at least, not the most forthright
character. . . . Witness the blankets and leather straps when he crosses
the MGRMnts.  My first thought was that Wizard was trying to get some
"padding" and protection for himself.>>
 
I'm sure he was doing that, too; he's a fairly elderly man, after all. 

  I think Joyce Odell is on target when she writes, <<the "grown-up"
characters are not superior to the child characters.>> The Wizard has great
sins before WIZARD to live down, and little quirks even after he's become a
palace favorite. Baum, an old showman himself, never lost sight of the
Wizard's pride when his magic saves the day or awes a crowd. Thompson
reveals his competitive instinct when Jinnicky or other powerful male
magicians come around. And Neill has him sauntering through the Emerald
City in disguises, fooling innocent boys from Munchkinland. 

  (I think Joyce is perhaps a little harsh in complaining that <<[in] Lewis
Carroll's [books], just about every character Alice meets is a "grown-up",
who, however witless, ineffectual or bizarre, never lets her forget it.>>
That's quite true, but it's also one of the most subversive messages of
Carroll's worlds: Grown-ups are CRAZEEE! Unlike Baum, however, he provided
no out, no haven where adults and children interact on an equal basis.
Eventually Alice has to take things in her own hands and shake.)
 
How's this for irony? After urging since March that the Books of Wonder
color-plate edition of LOST PRINCESS would help our discussion, I still
don't have a copy. [Does anyone?] Therefore, I have nothing to say about
those plates. Before you get too excited, though, I have some comments on
the line drawings--

  4 (white cover edition): I think this is our first picture of Glinda's
lovely swan chariot, as described also on page 73. The birds seem to be
tethered to it by invisible harnesses. In GLINDA and other books, the
sorceress has a "stork aerial chariot" instead, or as well.

  25: This picture of Scraps having her eyes sewn on could well be taken as
a picture of Aunt Em. But the seamstress doesn't look like any other
drawing of Em. And why would she choose a dim, book-stuffed garret to do
her mending? I therefore view this drawing as a picture of Margolotte
creating the Patchwork Girl in the first place, back in the cottage she
shared with that owner of magic books, Dr. Pipt. 

  38, 47: I like how Neill takes care to depict the Yips' houses and
clothing as different from those of regular Ozians, though both styles are
unlike what readers would be used to. 

  55: An error: Neill's art of the Frogman leaping the gulf around the Yip
country should show Cayke on his back. 

  75: I believe this is the first map within an Oz book's text, as opposed
to the TIK-TOK maps in an endpaper. The border lines and other geographical
features seem to be traced from that earlier map. One interesting detail:
since the TIK-TOK map of Oz was designed to be first an endpaper with its
center disappearing into the book's binding, the cartographer made sure the
narrow stripe down the very center didn't contain any necessary
information. Letters in the labels don't land there, for instance. The
Emerald City presented the mapmaker with a challenge, though, because it
has to fall dead center. The capital was therefore drawn as an oval, though
it looks circular when the map is bound into a book (and on the
accompanying Oz-and-surroundings map). Whoever drew the map for LOST
PRINCESS must have traced an unbound copy of that TIK-TOK map, however,
because here the Emerald City comes out oval. 

  76: The shadowy outline behind the Shaggy Man seems to be our only image
of his brother's face. No wonder Shaggy thinks the young man is so
handsome!

  101: On page 70 Baum says Button-Bright has started to dress like Ojo,
though in "different [unspecified] colors." Neill continues to dress him
like an upper-class boy from America. I suspect Button-Bright would simply
put on whatever clothes he found in his closet when he thought of changing.
I always liked how Ozma had her tailors provide the Shaggy Man with shaggy
clothes, so it makes sense to me that those same tailors would continue to
make Button-Bright the sort of outfits he's used to. 

  275: As in other books, Neill employs a pattern of parallel lines to
provide uniform shading for parts of his drawings. Usually he uses that
pattern for backgrounds, though on the copyright page such lines tint the
Frogman's suit. In this art he tilts the lines to show the tilting of Ugu's
room--clever! 
 
About MAGIC DISHPAN Tyler Jones wrote:
<<Author Jeff Freedman continues the Neill-esque tradition of taking the
color scheme of each quadrant to the extreme: Absolutely everything is
yellow (or whatever color), even the skin color of the citizens.>>
 
In conjunction with the allegorical wizards of ignorance, suspicion, etc.,
the Ozians' skin colors turn the book into an obvious lesson about racism.
This is one theme I found too preachy.
 
Tyler Jones wrote:
<<We see that the dragon of copyright law has reared its ugly head. The
Magicians must attack Randy and Planetty instead of Joe King of Uptown, who
would be the obvious target for taking over the land of the Gillikins.>>
 
Joe King appears in WISHING HORSE, so a few aspects of his character are in
the public domain: his high horse, his nominal rule over the Gillikins. But
I don't think he reveals enough personality in that book for a current
author to use him at length without either (a) violating Thompson's GIANT
HORSE copyright, (b) contradicting Thompson's GIANT HORSE characterization,
or (c) boring readers (not that Sir Dynar is at all dynamic).

  I didn't miss Joe, though; I assumed Regalia was in this book because of
Planetty's appeal for girls.
 
Tyler Jones wrote:
<<I was a little concerned at a new power given to Glinda's Great Book of
Records. You can now ask it questions, and it will flip to the relevant
section and give you information on it.>>
 
This bothered me, too. When I was a boy, we didn't have any of this
words-in-red, automatic-searching claptrap! If you wanted to learn
something from the Great Book of Records, you had to read it all the way
through! 

  In a blizzard! 

  Barefoot!
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 01:12:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-13-98
 
 
 
>I think that would just transfer the convenient deity from one machine (the
>>Belt) to another (the chandelier). It seems important that Dorothy and her
>>party actually bring the power to vanquish Ugu; 
 
This wouldn't have been all that hard to do if Baum had thought about it a bit
more. We are led to believe that there might be all sorts of useful tricks in
the wizard's black bag.  So here we are with Ugu having taunted the rescue
party, turned the room upside down, and left the magic implements in plain
sight, but unreachable in their cage, now near the ceiling. Consider:
 
1. The Frogman has taken a dose of zosozo, and now has Herkulian strength.
2. Scraps, although comparitively lightweight, is solid enough to be thrown
some distance without danger of being harmed by a fall.
 
So, while the Frogman -- due to the chandelier now being in the way -- may not
be able to make a clear jump up to the cage himself, he should be able to toss
Scraps up high enough for her to grab hold of the bars, (which may take more
than one try) which are far enough apart for her to either squeeze through
herself, or to reach through them to the bag and toss the wizard whatever he
wants from it. Fairly simple, you must admit, but all the pieces were clearly
in place for it, and any one of the party might have thought of it. Only none
of them did, and it was not used. 
 
For the record, I also find Dorothy's experiments on sleeping companions to be
objectionable. Nor does Baum ever follow up on it in future books. So it feels
even more out of place.

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 07:53:09 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: teddy bears in Oz correction
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
A correction:
  The Baum poem published in this year's OZ-STORY is called "Teddy Bear
Hunt," and its first line is "Why does our Teddy hunt bear, Papa?" It first
appeared in FATHER GOOSE'S YEAR BOOK in 1907, which helps to date the teddy
bear fad to before Roosevelt left office.
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 15:14:44 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
J. L. Bell: The "pretty lake which was but a short distance from Ozma's 
home" -- if you're right in assuming that the lake is the one shown on 
the map (and it seems plausible that it would be), then the answer to 
whether it's mentioned earlier in the Oz books is no, as it is first 
named as Lake Quad in Neill's "Lucky Bucky" (and he also mentioned 
it without name in "Scalawagons"), but the lake also plays a role in the 
ms fragment of "An Oz Book" (printed in the "Bugle" in 1975), and 
probably written by Baum (date unknown, but later than "John 
Dough"). 
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 22:23:47 +0000 (GMT)
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-13-98
 
J.L.:
Even if there's not as much tin in Oz as there is gold and silver it
doesn't mean that tin is particularly rare. It could hardly be when the Tin
Woodman has an entire castle built of it. (I assume probably alloyed with
something else; pure tin is soft and I doubt if it would work as a
structural material.)
 
>  71: Ojo says, "Only wicked people steal." Sanctimonious words from the
>Emerald City's only ex-con!
 
But Ojo's crime wasn't stealing, and it was generally acknowledged that
while he'd committed a crime he wasn't wicked to do so, just badly informed.
 
I'd guess that the occasion when Hank lost his bray took place on the ship.
The _Tik-Tok_ adventure seems too short for it to have included such an
occasion; we're with Hank and Betsy through almost all of it.
 
>  304: Does anyone recall if "the pretty lake which was but a short
>distance from Ozma's home" was mentioned in the series before this? It
>appears on the TIK-TOK (and LOST PRINCESS) maps, but those maps might have
>prompted this mention in Baum's text, rather than the other way around.
 
I don't remember the lake being mentioned earlier, but I haven't gone back
through the earlier books looking for a mention of it, either. It didn't
play a significant role in any of the FF but _Lucky Bucky_.
 
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 11:47:30 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: irrelevant Oz
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Nice scenario, Joyce Odell, for how Dorothy's search party could have
retrieved the Wizard's black bag and turned the tables on Ugu without the
Magic Belt. I imagine the Frogman kicking Scraps upwards with his strong
legs. That idea need simply come from one of the girls (i.e., a child
solves the problem), and all our objections to LOST PRINCESS's ending would
again be answered. 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 10:51:10 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
J.L. Bell: Interesting comments on the art.  You're probably right that 
the picture of "Em" mending the Patchwork Girl is actually a view of 
Dame Margolotte -- although it doesn't actually look much like 
Margolotte in the one view of her in "Patchwork Girl."  Perhaps he had 
done it earlier for "PG" and discarded it because he changed his mind 
about Margolotte's looks.  Interesting points also on the oval Emerald 
City on the map, and why Shaggy considers his brother handsome.  
On Button Bright as drawn in American clothes, even though the text 
describes him in Ojo-style but non-blue clothes -- Neill very likely didn't 
wanted to follow the description, as it would make differentiating the 
two characters in the illos difficult.  One of the color plates you'll be 
seeing when your BoW arrives is a handsome portrait of the two boys.  
Another strikingly attractive color plate is the frontispiece, of Ozma with 
a meditative expression, standing on the palace grounds, with a tiny 
Soldier on guard far behind her.  (I wonder if it would be possible to 
write a story about the Soldier's view of the "LP" events, about how he 
felt when he got back from his fishing vacation and found out what a 
threat had occurred in his absence, and how he thought he might 
have prevented it all Had He But Been There.)  I like Baum's idea of a 
wickerwork castle, and like the way Neill picked up on it in the illos to 
make the texture of all that wicker stuff (even a wicker bottle) an 
important part of the design.  Anyone have an idea what the object is 
(in the illo of Ugu in his castle on p. 215) with the dimensions of 
4'3"x7'0" and why Neill would choose that size?
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 20:47:17 +0000 (GMT)
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-14-98
 
Atticus:
>While there are certainly flaws in Baum's other books, in my opinion LP
>contains one of the most drastic inconsistencies ("Duh, how does this Belt
>thingy work?") and some of the most dramatic deviations from character
>(pointed out by Bob Spark and others) in the First Fourteen.
 
We'll just have to agree to disagree about this. Consistency was never
Baum's strong point; what's more or less drastic is, I think, a matter of
personal judgment.
 
J.L.:
>How's this for irony? After urging since March that the Books of Wonder
>color-plate edition of LOST PRINCESS would help our discussion, I still
>don't have a copy. [Does anyone?]
 
I got mine today, after seeing a copy earlier in the day at a Borders. The
plates vary in quality (I mean in the originals; the BoW edition reproduces
them very well as far as I can tell). Neill seems to have been fascinated
with the Frogman, and drew more plates of him than I think his role
justifies, but that's a value judgment. The frontispiece is one of the
better early (back before she got to be Slinky) color renditions of Ozma,
imho. And I like the rendition of Button-Bright in the peach tree, though
Neill shows a second peach even though Baum says there was only one on the
whole tree. (I didn't notice this on my own; I'd read about it in the Bugle
or on the Digest or both. But this is the first time I'd seen the plate.)
 
>  25: This picture of Scraps having her eyes sewn on could well be taken as
>a picture of Aunt Em. But the seamstress doesn't look like any other
>drawing of Em. And why would she choose a dim, book-stuffed garret to do
>her mending? I therefore view this drawing as a picture of Margolotte
>creating the Patchwork Girl in the first place, back in the cottage she
>shared with that owner of magic books, Dr. Pipt.
 
I think you're right. Scraps's posture doesn't seem to me to be one she'd
have if she were animate at the time of that picture. I don't think that's
a "dim" garret, though; it looks to me as if there's a large window right
behind the seamstress throwing a lot of light on Scraps's face. Probably a
room with strong north light, which would be good for fine sewing.
 
>The capital was therefore drawn as an oval, though
>it looks circular when the map is bound into a book (and on the
>accompanying Oz-and-surroundings map). Whoever drew the map for LOST
>PRINCESS must have traced an unbound copy of that TIK-TOK map, however,
>because here the Emerald City comes out oval.
 
I don't think the idea was for the Emerald City to come out circular when
bound into a book on the endpapers. That elongated shape is the standard
cut for emeralds (it's called the "emerald cut," when used for other
jewels), and would be natural for the Emerald City.
 
>  101: On page 70 Baum says Button-Bright has started to dress like Ojo,
>though in "different [unspecified] colors." Neill continues to dress him
>like an upper-class boy from America. I suspect Button-Bright would simply
>put on whatever clothes he found in his closet when he thought of changing.
>I always liked how Ozma had her tailors provide the Shaggy Man with shaggy
>clothes, so it makes sense to me that those same tailors would continue to
>make Button-Bright the sort of outfits he's used to.
 
Button-Bright's costumes in the color plates look very much like the ones
he wore in _Sky Island_ and _Scarecrow_; Neill evidently didn't read Baum's
line about his dressing like Ojo. The color plate opposite page 70 in the
BoW edition shows Ojo and Button-Bright side by side, and other than the
fact that they're both wearing knee-breeches their costumes are totally
different. Ojo has a tall pointed hat with bells and a feather;
Button-Bright has a wide-brimmed hat with a low crown and a ribbon. Ojo has
a ruff; Button-Bright has an Eton collar (I think that's what they call it)
and a neckcloth. Ojo's pants are cut very wide at the thighs and hips,
rather like jodhpurs; Button-Bright's are much more fitted. Ojo's coat is a
cutaway with tails and no belt; Button-Bright's is cut square across at hip
level and is belted. Ojo has ribbons with bows below his knees and on his
shoes, which appear to be pumps; Button-Bright has no ribbons, his pants
stop above his knees, and his shoes are laced.
 
>This bothered me, too. When I was a boy, we didn't have any of this
>words-in-red, automatic-searching claptrap! If you wanted to learn
>something from the Great Book of Records, you had to read it all the way
>through!
>  In a blizzard!
>  Barefoot!
 
Don't forget uphill both ways!
 
In addition to _Magic Dishpan_, incidentally, ECP's most recent book, _The
Lavender Bear of Oz_, also ties in quite well with _Lost Princess_. It is,
unfortunately, a pretty weak book. Campbell and Terry weren't nearly as
clever in this one as they were in _Masquerade_, imho.
 
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 09:54:26 -0500
From: "R. M. Atticus Gannaway" <atty242 at mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-17-98
 
DAVID HULAN:
 
I agree with you on the relative overabundance of frog in the _Lost
Princess_ color plates.  The Frogman appears prominently in 4 of the 12 and
less prominently in a fifth.  Of course, since Neill apparently didn't pick
which of his pictures would be plates, we can't chalk that phenomenon up to
his credit.
 
Atticus
* * *
 
"...[T]here is something else: the faith of those despised and endangered
that they are not merely the sum of damages done to them."
 
Visit my webpage at

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 09:51:34 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Joyce Odell & J.L. Bell (rhymes?): In terms of how frogs move, I think 
it would have been difficult for the Frogman to throw Scraps up to the 
cage, or to see to aim accurately enough if he'd kicked.  Maybe if he'd 
jumped with Scraps on his back, she could have reached up and 
caught hold.  Although if the chandelier was getting in the way when 
the Frogman tried jumping just on his own, it might have been equally 
in the way of Scraps, however she was sent ceilingwards?  The 
chandelier design suggests that it would be hard to grab hold of/climb 
up?
 
David Hulan: Suggestion that the Tin Woodman's 
tin castle is probably alloyed with something else -- well, as one of his 
favorite songs has it, "There's No Plate Like Tin."  He's probably tin-
plated himself (with the later zinc-plating on top of that), considering 
the episode in "Queer Visitors" where he becomes a magnet?
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 15:44:44 +0000 (GMT)
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-17-98
 
Ruth:
>Anyone have an idea what the object is
>(in the illo of Ugu in his castle on p. 215) with the dimensions of
>4'3"x7'0" and why Neill would choose that size?
 
It's an angle-measuring device of some sort - looks as if it might be a
magical clamp for holding two boards or other structural pieces at a set
angle to each other prior to fastening them together. The big and little
hands are pointing at present, since they're empty, but I'd suppose they'd
open up and grab the items when needed. I have no idea why Neill would
choose those dimensions (the arc clearly has degrees marked on it, though
some of them aren't particularly legible); maybe they're the maximum size
object (a sheet of plywood? Those are usually 4'x8' now, but in 1917 - or
in Oz - it might be different) that the hands can hold?
 
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 22:49:41 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: LOST PRINCESS OF OZ color plates
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
About Ojo's comment on theft in LOST PRINCESS, Dave Hulan wrote:
<<But Ojo's crime wasn't stealing, and it was generally acknowledged that
while he'd committed a crime he wasn't wicked to do so, just badly
informed.>>
 
Ojo inadvertently stumbled onto a classic moral question: Is it okay for
parents to steal bread to feed their children? For him to answer no, "Only
wicked people steal," shows little ethical sophistication. Especially when
he'd previously taken something that he'd been warned he wasn't allowed to
take (akin to stealing) and justified it as a matter of life and
death--that shows even less [shall we say?] perspective.
 
This afternoon I saw the Books of Wonder LOST PRINCESS in a store for the
first time. When I arrived home in the evening, I found my own copy. As
with other Baum books, this is the first time I'd seen most of the color
plates. 

  The back of the "white cover" edition I grew up with has a Dick Martin
drawing of two This. This was one of the first illustrations I realized had
to be Martin's, even before I learned the extent of his work on R&L covers,
frontmatter, etc. The rendering of eyes, fingers, and shoes is different
from Neill's. Now I see that drawing is tenuously connected to a Neill
plate, the one opposite p. 126. Martin redrew the two right-hand figures in
a more cartoony--and, frankly, less disturbing--way. The resulting tone is
more akin to the line art on p. 133, of the pleasant High Coco-Lorum.
 
Ruth Berman mentioned:
<<the frontispiece, of Ozma with a meditative expression, standing on the
palace grounds, with a tiny Soldier on guard far behind her.  (I wonder if
it would be possible to write a story about the Soldier's view of the "LP"
events, about how he felt when he got back from his fishing vacation and
found out what a threat had occurred in his absence, and how he thought he
might have prevented it all Had He But Been There.)>>
 
I imagine Omby Amby wiping his high forehead, secretly relieved that He
Hadn't Been There! 

  As to the identity of Ozma's third private, my first guess is
Tollydiggle. She's the only other Emerald City functionary we meet. Perhaps
all the capital's public servants are really privates.
 
Dave Hulan wrote:
<<Neill seems to have been fascinated with the Frogman, and drew more
plates of him than I think his role justifies>>
 
The Frogman does get an unusual amount of face time. There are no fewer
than two plates of his encounter with Corporal Waddles, for instance. The
second one (opposite p. 212) makes me think OZ: THE EWOK ADVENTURE.
 
Ruth Berman asked:
<<Anyone have an idea what the object is (in the illo of Ugu in his castle
on p. 215) with the dimensions of 4'3"x7'0" and why Neill would choose that
size?>>
 
It looks like a pair of calipers. There are also degree measurements on the
curved part, reading approximately 50 degrees. 

  Hey, is there a link between Ugu's wicker castle and his wickedness?
 
Thanks to both Ruth Berman and Dave Hulan for your learned responses on how
Lake Quad hadn't featured in Baum's books before LOST PRINCESS. This is
another example, I think, of how Baum incorporated a feature casually drawn
on the TIK-TOK maps into his subsequent stories.

  About those maps Dave wrote: <<I don't think the idea was for the Emerald
City to come out circular when bound into a book on the endpapers. That
elongated shape is the standard cut for emeralds (it's called the "emerald
cut," when used for other jewels)>>.
 
The "emerald cut" reasoning is strong, but the two indications that the
mapmaker planned for the Emerald City to come out as circular in the
endpaper map of Oz are:

  1) The capital is circular on the accompanying map of the continent.
  2) The placement of labels and other features on the Oz map so that they
wouldn't be hidden in the endpaper's fold implies the mapmaker foresaw that
problem and worked around it. 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 11:54:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ozmama at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 09-17-98
 
David: "I don't think the idea was for the Emerald City to come out circular 
when bound into a book on the endpapers. That elongated shape is the 
standard cut for emeralds (it's called the "emerald cut," when used for 
other jewels), and would be natural for the Emerald City.""  I don't think so,
David.  According to the Home Shopping Club (the ultimate source, no?)
the emerald cut is rectangular...longer than it is wide.
 
--Robin

Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 22:17:52 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: irrelevant Oz
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
About the Tin Woodman Ruth Berman wrote:
<<He's probably tin-plated himself (w