For whatever it's worth, I regret making this video. I haven't changed my mind about any of the substantive points in here, but recent events have made me realize that the most toxic thing about booktube is the predilection booktubers have for telling other booktubers that they are doing booktube wrong. It just leads to bad vibes and unnecessary drama. I desire in the future to just talk about the books I'm reading, and not what other booktubers are doing.
The new characters in this one were actually pretty interesting, and there’s something about a patchwork girl that I found to be super relatable. But I did have a problem with the plot, and it’s basically the same problem that keeps on occurring.Basically, the main characters are trying to brew up a potion that can be used to turn some petrified people back into flesh and blood, and I just couldn’t help wondering why they didn’t just ask Ozma to use her magic belt to do it. They even meet Ozma about two thirds of the way through the book and carry on trying to gather up all of the ingredients they need when they could have just asked her for a cheeky favour.
I agree.
When I first read this book as a child, I was horrified that my kind hearted Tin Woodman was willing to let two people—one a beloved uncle of the main character—remain stone statues, essentially dead, all to keep a butterfly from feeling any pain. And although as an adult I can see the Tin Woodman’s point, I still find the elevation of a butterfly over the urgent needs of two humans morally dubious.
Believe it or not, I really don’t want to be all about the Ozma hate. But honestly, Ozma, would it have killed you to, you know, explain the idea behind your law to the Shaggy Man, at least, so that it would not have seemed so arbitrary and unfair?
Two things mar Patchwork Girl: an incident with the Tottenhots, meant to refer to stereotypical descriptions of the Hottenhots of South Africa, and the horrible song played by the living phonograph, with the godawful lyrics, “Ah wants mah Lulu, my coal-black Lulu.” The Oz characters, to their credit, also object to this song, even if they seem to be reacting more to the sound than to the lyrics. Both bits are jarring in a book where a literally colorful woman, created to be a household slave, earns her independence and merrily defends her unusual, “crazy” appearance, refusing to be pitied or condemned. It’s also a depressing reminder that here, at least, Baum was all too much a man of his age, despite his pointed examples of tolerance and acceptance of differing sorts of people in this and other Oz books.(The racial references have been removed in the Books of Wonder editions, but can be found in other printings and in the Gutenberg etexts....
After reading this, I double checked. And indeed, also in my version (The Complete Stories of Oz) "coal black" has been replaced by "cross-eyed". But the original text is preserved on project Gutenberg.
* There's also the Wikipedia entry for this book, which had some interesting information about the writing of this book.
The same correspondence (November 23–7, 1912) discusses the deleted Chapter 21 of the book, "The Garden of Meats." The text of the chapter has not survived, but Neill's illustrations and their captions still exist. The deleted chapter dealt with a race of vegetable people comparable to the Mangaboos in Chapters 4–6 of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. The vegetable people grow what Baum elsewhere calls "meat people," apparently for food; Neill's pictures show plants with the heads of human children[4] being watered by their growers. (This is thematically connected with the anthropophagous plants in Chapter 10 of Patchwork Girl.) Frank Reilly tactfully wrote to Baum that the material was not "in harmony with your other fairy stories," and would generate "considerable adverse criticism." Baum saw his point; the chapter was dropped.[5]
* And also via Wikipedia, I learned that the Wise Donkey who appears in this book is a crossover character from another of L. Frank Baum's fantasy books, The Magical Monarch of Mo. (This continues the trend of what I've been noting in these Oz reviews--there's more than just an Oz series, there's a whole L. Frank Baum extended universe.)
* Update: Dane's video review is HERE.
Finished: The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Dane and I usually post our Oz reviews on Monday, but since my access to Internet is a bit up in the air the next couple days, I'll just post my review whenever I can.)
Playlist for 2021 Movies HERE:
Translated by T.E. Lawrence ( Book Review -- Rereads , Classics , Greek Mythology ) Started : November 20, 2022 Finished : January 01, 2023...
