Yay, it's back, at least for a while! With work demands easing up a bit, I thought I'd try reviving this feature, at least for a bit so that I can finish off The Little Wizard Stories of Oz, and then take care of my latest item. More on that in a few weeks. First off, though, is "Ozma and the Little Wizard", in which the title pair head off to hlp the people of Oz. They come to a village dealing with some mischievous imps, and Ozma and the Wizard go off to confront them. Sure enough, the imps shove them around, push the Wizard into the river, and so forth. The Wizard, now an experienced magic user, manages to transform them into prickly bushes. But they can still move around and hurt people that way, so the Wizard tries transforming them into piglets and doves, but they prove to be no better. Finally, thinking to transform them into something inanimate, he transforms them into buttons. He manages to put a little extra into the spell that will cause them to change color when they decide to reform, and so the Wizard will sew them onto his jacket and keep an eye on them that way.
Like the rest of these stories, this is short asd slight and, ultimately, kind of sweet, since Baum was writing for a younger audience than the rest of the Oz books. If the story hadbeen longer, I suspect Baum would have tried transforming them into all kinds of things, but he sure gives the impression with the small number of transformations he gives them here. It's too bad Baum never got the chance to write about their ultimate penance and what happened after that (altough I seem to recall Chris Dulabone publishing a book about them).
No comments:
Post a Comment