John R. Neill (1) (1877–1943)

The Runaway in Oz was intended as the Oz book for 1943, but John R. Neill died before he finished editing the manuscript or even started doing the illustrations; the publisher opted to forego an Oz book for the year, and the next would not appear until 1946. In 1995, however, Books of Wonder finally published the book with the blessing of Neill's family, edited and illustrated by contemporary Oz superstar Eric Shanower. I opted to read this to my five-year-old son following on from Lucky Bucky as if it was the Oz book for 1943. By the time we got to 1995, I am not so sure he would remember who, say, Jenny Jump was!

In some ways, this is probably the best of John R. Neill's four Oz books. In a comment on the late, lamented Tor.com, editor Eric Shanower says one of the things he did was "[t]ake out whatever made no sense"—in a John R. Neill book this could, of course, be quite a lot, and Runaway certainly has a cohesion lacking in, say, Wonder City or Scalawagons of Oz. It has two clear, parallel plots in the classic Baum/Thompson fashion, one about Scraps running away from the Emerald City and one about Jenny Jump, Jack Pumpkinhead, and the Wogglebug trying to find her. Yet it still has that John R. Neill fancifulness, with details such as the Wogglebug literally creating a castle in the air while he dreams—one he intends to use to take a vacation!

The best part of the book is probably the beginning, where Scraps antagonizes in turn Jellia Jamb, the Tin Woodman, and Jenny Jump. Convinced everyone is "mean" for simply telling her to behave herself, she resolves to run away. It's a very child-like, very accurate response, and it led to some good moments with my five-year-old, who likes to declare that I am mean whenever I enforce a rule or boundary, no matter how gently I do it. Were Jellia or Jenny being mean to Scraps, I asked? No, he declared. Hmmmm... Will this lesson sink in? Well, I am less sure about that.

You might think, then, that the book would end with Scraps learning to accept some responsibility for her actions, but this only kind of happens. There is a great scene where Scraps returns to the Emerald City, seemingly in prisoners' garb (a sheet, in a callback to Patchwork Girl), but I feel like an author who was not John R. Neill could have pulled things together a bit more strongly. I do like the somewhat Ozzy moral that sometimes it's right to run away, but it does seem to me that Scraps largely gets away without actually learning anything even if she does inadvertently face some consequences.

So the book was lively and focused, but not always totally successful at what it seemed like it was doing, if that makes sense. And while it certainly had a coherence lacking in Wonder City, Wonder City was so manic it almost gets away with its many faults, which isn't quite the case here.

Eric Shanower illustrates, and it's certainly a beautiful edition. Shanower's character designs are clearly influenced by Neill's, but he has a somewhat different style, with a tightness of line that makes the weirdness of what he's drawing seem more real. This being a Neill novel, there's a lot of fanciful imagery, and Shanower does a great job with it; probably my favorite was the army of quinces! The flat people were also pretty great.

I could also detect (so I believe) a bit of fannishness in Shanower's editing. This is the first book to get east and west right since Ruth Plumly Thompson took over, and there's an extended passage of exposition reversing Jenny Jump's "lobotomy" from Wonder City. Actually, I very much enjoyed Shanower's Jenny, particularly all her costume and hairstyle changes. It's a shame Neill's work is still under copyright, because that means Jenny (and Number Nine) haven't been available to other authors, and they're strong characters I'd like to see in other Oz stories. I also like the continuing friendship between Scraps and Jack Pumpkinhead.

Things my son really did not like: the stressful sequence where the air castle disintegrates, Scraps being turned all black by the quinces. But on the whole, he reported enjoying this one. Both of us like the Patchwork Girl a lot, so perhaps we were destined to! Even the three-year-old is into her; whenever we read a chapter at bedtime, he would point to the cover and declare, "Scraps is rainbow. Scraps is rainbow!" A couple weeks later, I asked him if he remembered what color Scraps was and he said "Scraps is rainbow... but she turned black!" So the books are starting to sink in for him as well.… (mehr)

Back when I wrote up Neill's first Oz book, I wrote that "the thing I like about more than anything else is that it might be the first Oz book to give us a sense of what it's like to live in Oz." From the author's note at the beginning of his second, one discovers that this was in fact his explicit intention:

Day by day stirring events happen in the Land of OZ which we are compelled to let pass. No one will ever know of them.
     It would be impossible to tell you all that happens in a whole year.
     This book is the record of less than a week.

Basically, strange things are constantly happening in Oz; it's not that the books we get annually are the only significant events, rather, they are but the tip of the iceberg. (This is a handy get out for seeming continuity errors, of course. Why is Ojo an elephant boy now? Why is Jack Pumpkinhead trying to make Scraps into a proper lady? Why is the Scarecrow ruler of the Munchkins? Well, presumably, very exciting adventures occupying the other fifty-one weeks of the year would answer all of these questions.) The people of Oz are constantly going through wacky adventures... and, of course, finding it all immensely fun. Wouldn't you, if you couldn't get hurt and you knew your fairy queen could sort out any real problem with her magic belt? Indeed, Scalawagons kind of provides an answer to a problem that plagued Ruth Plumly Thompson's novels, where Oz was always coming within moment of being conquered by honestly pretty pathetic outside forces. Why shouldn't Ozma let these folks get as far as they can get, when she know ultimately everything will turn out fine? If everyone everyone who's not her gets a chance to stop the villains, they get something to do!

The premise of Scalawagons is that the Wizard invents self-driving cars, which he calls "scalawagons," and sets up a factory to produce them on Carrot Mountain in the Quadling Country with Tik-Tok as superintendent. Unfortunately, a creature called the Bell-Snickle fills them up with flabbergas, making them do all kinds of crazy things and fly away, meaning the cars are no-shows at the party devoted to their reveal. Jenny Jump, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Sawhorse set out to recover them, but in the meantime the scalawagons have crossed the Deadly Desert and run into the Mifkits, a tribe of strange creatures from outside Oz. (The Mifkits are from Baum's non-Oz novel John Dough and the Cherub, though based on their location and the fact that they can throw their heads, Neill seems to be thinking of the Scoodlers from Road to Oz.)

Like Wonder City, the main sense this book gives is that we should wonder at the weirdness of Oz, for there's little actual danger or stakes. And we do get some fun stuff: the Lollies and their Pops, who are living lollipops; water fairies that can be used to clean floors; a living clock who torments people who are late to work; living medicine bottles that are so desperate to be used they'll break your leg so they can fix it; the Winkie Woods being a place that literally winks on and off; bell-men who are literally men with bells on their head, who fly through the air having lost their home of Boboland (from Rinkitink in Oz, clearly Neill was working from the map this time out); living forests that travel the countryside in search of water.

But though my son always seemed quite engaged (indeed, he rated the book four out of four stars), I found it often tedious and pointless. One feels like Jenny's attempt to find the scalawagons ought to be the spine of whole book, but Neill must have run out of ideas because she catches up to them about halfway through and bringing the wayward machines back home is remarkably easy. From there, a bunch of random small encounters pad out the book, such as a stray Mifkit (Scoodler?) popping up in Oz and being given gainful employment, and the return of the Bell-Snickle and its doomed attempt to capture the Emerald City of Oz with an army of trees. Two different chapters are made up of nothing more than the Sawhorse running dangerously fast for no real reason; at one point, the Tin Woodman freezes up and can't be saved because there is allegedly no oil in the whole Emerald City. A bunch of animals go on a rampage for the second book in a row.

The characters, especially in the second half of the book, keep telling each other how much fun they're having, Neill presumably hoping this will trick the reader into thinking they're having fun. As I alluded to above, Ozma doesn't intervene to stop the Bell-Snickle from attacking the Emerald City so that Dorothy, Trot, Betsy, Jellia, and Jenny can try to stop it... but they don't actually do anything, they just follow it around in their scalawagons.

And though Neill draws, as usual, some delightful images (the Soldier with the Green Whiskers holding the detached head of the Mifkit by the tongue was my favorite), I felt like there were fewer of them than in Wonder City. Altogether, the book is maybe a tad more coherent than Wonder City... which is probably to its detriment, as it was impossible to be bored reading Wonder City, but I was fairly often bored here.

But, like I said, my five-year-old son seemed to enjoy it throughout, so I guess Neill knew his target demographic. The only thing he didn't like was the Bell-Snickle's assault on the scalawagon factory. And, you know, I continue to be appreciative that Neill remembers many of Baum's characters that Thompson clearly forgot about, like Em and Henry, the Sawhorse, and Tik-Tok, while keeping hers in play too (Captain Salt and Sir Hokus both get a few good lines).… (mehr)