Frogs in a Fog

Cross-posted from my own blog

Since I've addressed most of the major topics I could think of regarding the Oz books, I've been delving more into the minutiae. I'd like to know what you, the readers, think of that. Should I just rope it in until I can think of something more significant to say, or keep going with these? Anyway, I wrote a bit about Sky Island, the floating land mass from the book of the same name, in this post, but I wanted to say more on one specific place on the island, the Fog Bank that divides the Blue and Pink Countries.

As mentioned in the earlier post, this land of constant fog and rain is home to several giant animals. Most prominent, at least as far as we can tell from the brief descriptions in the book, are the enormous frogs. The members of this tribe are much larger than the human-sized Frogman, with even the smallest among them being able to carry three humans at the same time. They are ruled by a king who is ten times this size. The frogs are generally friendly, but are known to hate umbrellas, considering them an insult to their drizzly country. Phil Lewin also gives the frogs a bit of a sinister side when they return in his The Witch Queen of Oz to steal the Silver Shoes. During their visit to the Fog Bank, Trot, Cap'n Bill, and Button-Bright come across a few other oversized animals as well: a lizard, a land crab, and a turtle. The lizard, identified as "Little Lizzie" in John R. Neill's drawing, is asleep and dreaming of parsnips when the visitors encounter her. The crab, Cancer, claims to have fallen out of the Zodiac, and suffers from rheumatism in his legs. The turtle has its head and legs inside its shell, so there's no conversation there. I would not be at all surprised if there are other animals lurking in the murky country, but L. Frank Baum never introduced us to them.