This Week's Oz Short Story

The second story in the 2005 edition of Oziana is "The Patchwork Girl's Pet" by Peter Schulenberg, with illustrations by Sheena Hisiro. Appropriately for a story about Scraps, it's written as a series of quatrains. In other words, it's a poem. Scraps laments not having a pet. Dorothy has Toto, Betsy has Hank, why can't she have one, too? She has some particular parameters she hopes it meets, and sets out to find a pet that meets them. One of her first stops involves a conversation with a mouse named Larry, who thinks he can help her out, as he knows a lot of other animals in the area. They set out together, visiting many animals who don't quite fit what Scraps is looking for. Along the way, though, Scraps and Larry sing silly songs together and tell each other jokes and funny stories and do funny dances, and have a great time. By the end of the day, Scraps laments not finding a pet, so Larry suggests himself! True, he doesn't fit into Scraps' original plans, but she sees the wisdom in his words anyway and readily agrees. The story closes with Scraps and her new pet, Larry the Mouse, heading back to the Emerald City.

It's a charming little tale, and naturally anyone reading this could probably predict that Larry would become the pet as soon as he's introduced. I certainly enjoyed reading it again.

Since this was so short (and the final story of this issue so long), this is also a good chance for me to go over the extras in this issue. Kevenn T. Smith provides a colorful wraparound cover of a number of Oz characters skating on a pond (the back cover has the Wizard and Glinda zapping the water's surface, so I think we know why they are able to skate on it, particularly as it doesn't appear to be a cold day). In the back are three sudoku-style puzzles, only instead of numbers, solving them requires Oz characters. To make things even more interesting, the initial letters of each character spell out an Ozzy word or name in each puzzle's bottom row. And the final page, aside from the puzzles' answers cleverly hidden in another puzzle, is a call for contributors to Oziana.

Next week, we wrap up 2005!