The Seventeenth Swap

And to follow up last night's post, here's The Seventeenth Swap, another book with strong characterization by Eloise McGraw.

Eric Greene lives with his widower father. On Saturday, he spends the day with Jimmy, a crippled boy he babysits. Jimmy has fallen in love with a pair of cowboy boots he's seen for sale in a newspaper ad. Much as he wants them, he knows he'll never have them.

Except, Eric wants to get them for Jimmy now. Just to do something nice for someone. But Eric doesn't make much and by the time he could save up enough from what little he gets from babysitting, the sale would be long over.

However, Eric begins to think. There's things people around town want and things they'd give. Why not start swapping around until he has something he can sell for enough money for the boots?

Eric only has a week. Can he get it done in time?

You know what I was reminded of? The Donald Duck comic story "Maharajah Donald" in which the nephews trade pencil stubs for tickets to India and 500 pounds of cat food. Of course, Eloise's story is a bit more believable and goes through the entire process while Carl Barks made some big skips.

Again, Eloise gets inside Eric's head and lets us in on his frustrations and how he plans the swaps out.

So, The Seventeenth Swap is another excellent work by Eloise McGraw, demonstrating how obstacles can be overcome if you can make a plan and make it work.

A McGraw Quintet

Something that made me like Eloise McGraw: she didn't tell stories about people, she told their stories. Instead of saying, "such and such a character decided to do something" she would get in their heads and explain how they thought. Even in simple stories, this makes the work so much better. The characters are three dimensional and the reader can relate to them.

This is likely one reason why Oz fans enjoyed her Oz books. But I'm not talking about her Oz books right now. In my last blog, I said I had some of her non-Oz books and wanted to write about them.

I have five I've read and not written about. I blogged about The Moorchild, and while I started Moccasin Trail, I've yet to finish it. (For some reason, it was slow going and then I lost my copy. I got another but have yet to finish.) I'm finishing The Seventeenth Swap and am getting Mara, Daughter of the Nile.

Now, enough of that, let's look at some books by the sixth Royal Historian of Oz!

---

The Golden Goblet was published in 1961 and received a Newberry Honor.

The story is set in ancient Egypt. Ranofer is an orphan boy who works in a gold worker's shop. He lives with his brother Gebu, but as the story opens, he discovers that Gebu is part of a band of thieves who steal gold! Ranofer wants no part of it, but where can he go? Gebu will not let him leave.

Ranofer manages to tip the goldsmith off about Gebu's band's activities, but this only makes them change tactic.

One night, Ranofer finds a golden goblet that must have been stolen from a tomb. It is too beautiful and finely crafted for Ranofer to let Gebu melt down, so he sets out to set things right and expose his brother without getting himself in trouble.

The Golden Goblet immerses itself believably in ancient Egypt and delivers an exciting and satisfying finish.

---

Joel and the Great Merlini is a short book. Joel wants to do a magic show, but his tricks fail to impress, even when he can make them work. Enter Merlini the magician who makes it look like Joel does amazing feats. However, Joel soon realizes that he is dissatisfied with this arrangement.

Mixing fantasy with reality, Joel and the Great Merlini is an excellent story about the gratification of doing your own work.

---

The Money Room follows brother and sister Scott and Melinda (or "Lindy") as they've moved to a sleepy little country town in Oregon. While they search for their great-grandpa's legendary "Money Room," they slowly learn about their family history, their new town, and they even create their code for writing to each other.

However, someone else is looking for the "Money Room," too. Can Scott and Lindy find it first? And their mother isn't having a lot of luck with her job. The clock is ticking. What is the Money Room? Where is it? Is it even real?

The Money Room perfectly captures the uneasy feelings of moving to a new home and the simple joys children can find in life.

---

Hideaway finds a boy named Jerry running away from home. His parents have divorced and he's sick of being ignored. So he runs away to his grandparents' old home by the ocean. At least, he thought it was their home.

Hanna is house-sitting for a couple on vacation. Having bounced from different foster care homes all her life, she's almost too used to new faces. But when she meets Jerry, who broke into the house she's taking care of, she begins to think about what she wants in life.

It is a strange summer as these two decide what they should do with their lives from now on, and Eloise McGraw tells it wonderfully.

---

The Trouble With Jacob really got me going. Here is a story with an honest-to-goodness ghost!

Andy Peterson and his twin sister Kat are vacationing in the Hidden Creek countryside. While walking through the woods one day, Andy sees a little boy who tells him that somebody's got his bed. No one else seems to see the boy, but Andy sees him every time he walks by this large rock.

It takes some time for Andy to begin piecing things together, much less to convince anyone about the boy, who eventually says his name is Jacob. What Andy and Kat discover leads to the solution of a crime over a hundred years old, but with only conjecture on their part, can they convince anyone that justice must be delivered at last?

With a gentle supernatural spin, The Trouble With Jacob makes for an excellent read.

Guilty

Okay, so I just finished reading my archive of The Baum Bugle. I didn't re-read issues I'd received since I joined the Club or ones I'd read recently, or re-read Best of collections.

I read and discovered a lot of information. Do I remember it all? Probably not, though I do have a weird way of having it come to the surface when needed. But then sometimes I remember one thing and forget another...

I was really grateful for the information about Ruth Plumly Thompson. Before I'd read all her Oz books, my opinion of her was low. After reading them all, it went up. After all these articles about her and some even by her, my appreciation of her is very high.

Now, as I read often I always like to have something to read next lined up. Hence, an archive of The Baum Bugle meant there was no worries there. My coworkers once made "What is Jared reading" a point of curiosity. Now they accept it as a given.

Over Christmas, I got a couple Amazon gift cards. I used them to further my Oz collection, which... There's some things that the less-informed might wonder at the Oz connection! I have Jack Snow's Dark Music and a number of Eloise McGraw's non-Oz books.

For Christmas, I bought an Oz video game I can't play (the system is long obsolete, though it is being reproduced for collectors and retro-gamers), a record (that I also can't play right now), Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation (which I rejoiced to find it was a Reilly & Britton edition when I opened it), The Seventeenth Swap and Merlin: The Complete Second Season. (It's a good show.)

Now to why I named this post "Guilty." You might remember my mentioning PaperBackSwap.com and that is where some of Eloise's books came from. However, a friend had the credits and said he'd send them to me if I wrote blogs about them. I wrote about The Moorchild, but have neglected to do the rest. So, some catching up will be in order soon.

I'm reading The Seventeenth Swap, and I have to wonder, since it was published in 1986 (my birth year, coincidentally), if the main character's name "Eric Greene" might have been inspired by some Oz acquaintances. However, both names are pretty common, so I probably over-thought it.

I've ordered Mara, Daughter of the Nile. Like L. Frank Baum, Eloise McGraw was rather struck by Egypt and it inspired a number of her books, like The Golden Goblet, which is one of the ones I have read.

And in non-reading and blogging news, I've started a search for a very special thing in a film archive. And yes, there is an Oz connection there. A very big one. It is possible my hope is in vain, but it could be rewarded. If so, I'm not sure how we'd announce it. All I will say is that if it does turn up, we've already got a screening arranged.

Also, I have over two and a half hours of audio to edit where Sam and I talk about the MGM movie. It is by far the most audio we've ever recorded for one episode. We may have to split into two episodes, really.

The Royal Podcast of Oz: Eric Shanower

Sam and Jared interview cartoonist Eric Shanower!

Listen and download at the podcast site, or use the player below.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Movies/TV Update

The two-part version of "The Witches of Oz" (previously available on Pay-Per-View in the U.S.) will be out on DVD & Blu-Ray on April 3rd, 2012 from Image Entertainment. You can pre-order it on DVD here or Blu-Ray here.

The much talked about theatrical version of the film, re-titled "Dorothy and the Witches of Oz", will still proceed with a limited U.S. theatrical run in February, and a separate home video release to follow later on in the year.

In other news, I stumbled upon a direct-to-video movie from Fox coming out in March called "Berry Brick Road" in the Strawberry Shortcake line. As you could guess, it's Oz-themed. Doing a bit more research, I found the DVD cover for the movie online. It's out March 6th, so it comes out as a bit of a surprise that there has been no talk about it... Amazon.com lists it for $11.99, so you can pre-order that here.

That's all for this week.

PORTALS in Oz

In C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian, Aslan tells about "chinks and chasms" in between worlds that allow people to pass from one world to another. In the Oz books, however, traveling to the land of fantasy is very different.

It seems to be Baum's intention that Oz was a hidden place somewhere on Earth. Irregardless of this, some fans consider it to be in another world, or an alternate dimension. Some fans have complicated explanations.

I, however, go for Baum's intention. Saying that dimensional rifts or warps opened up every time someone went to Oz in the books is a bit much. In other works, like Narnia, it is implied there is some force who has allowed the passage to open. With the exception of The Road to Oz and The Emerald City of Oz, no one in Baum's books forces their way into fantasyland, but enters quite by accident. In most cases (such as Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and The Scarecrow of Oz), somewhat plausible explanations are provided. (Plausible once disbelief in fairyland is suspended.)

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Oz was just an isolated country surrounded by desert. Like Alexander Volkov's Magic Land, it could have been hidden in North America. But as soon as Ozma of Oz, it was made clear this was not the case. Now, past the desert, there are other kingdoms, many of which border the ocean. In The Marvelous Land of Oz, the Gump flies over the Deadly Desert, and the Scarecrow fears they're in Dorothy's outside world, but later maps of Oz show us they are simply in bordering countries. (Bordering countries that use paper dollars in money.)

So, how did that cyclone carry Dorothy's house away from Kansas, the continental United States, over the ocean, over the borderlands of Oz, and straight into Munchkin Country, luckily squashing a Wicked Witch?

Some Oz fans suspect the Good Witches may have had a hand in that happenstance. In fact, in Volkov's The Wizard of the Emerald City, the Good Witch of the North (Villina) reveals that the Wicked Witch of the East (Gingemma) was going to have the storm that brought Elli kill all human life on earth. Villina altered it so that a house that should have been abandoned would be dropped on Gingemma. It was a fluke that Elli was there at all.

In the original Wizard of Oz musical, fairies protect Dorothy's house while it is in the air. If this was Baum's intention (the moment is orchestrated wonderfully by Paul Tietjens), it seems these fairies sent Dorothy somewhere safe. Why that's on top of a witch, we don't know. Or perhaps somehow the house entered a rift in space or portal that sent Dorothy to Oz. Or it got hurled through the air. Really, really hard. And the fact that it landed on the Wicked Witch of the East was just coincidence.

None of Baum's other books have travels to fairyland this problematic. In Ozma of Oz, Dorothy is adrift at sea in a chicken coop and awakes off the coast of Ev. In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, most of the action occurs underground (which Baum later revealed in his maps to be under Boboland) which was caused by an earthquake, and later the Magic Belt brings everyone to Oz. In The Road to Oz, Ozma oddly brings Dorothy to a crossroads in a southern borderland of Oz (according to the map). I can only suppose she wanted Dorothy to have an adventure. In The Emerald City to Oz, the Magic Belt again brings Dorothy, Toto, Aunt Em, Uncle Henry and (not mentioned but revealed later in the series) Eureka to Oz.

In Tik-Tok of Oz, another storm at sea brings Betsy and Hank to the Rose Kingdom, and they are later brought to Oz with the Wizard's magic. In The Scarecrow of Oz, Trot and Cap'n Bill are sucked into a whirlpool and journey underground before emerging on Pessim's island, where they fly to the Valley of Mo, and from there fly to Oz.

Thompson didn't really deviate too much from the ways to get to Oz that Baum had established. Peter is kidnapped by a balloon bird then travels with Ruggedo, wishes himself to Oz for change, and finally shipwrecked. Speedy flies to Oz but goes underground in a rocket ship first, then later is blown onto Umbrella Island by a geyser. Bob Up and Notta Bit More accidentally stumble on a magic chant that take them to the Munchkin Country of Mudge.

The curious one is the live statue Benny: he falls into Oz. This is problematic as it seemed like Oz was on the surface. We can only assume it must have been a space rift, possibly caused by that magic spell that brought him to life.

In Neill, Jenny Jump jumps high into the air and spies Oz and decides to land there. Lucky Bucky is hurled through the air by an exploding boiler and is rescued by Davy Jones the wooden whale who takes him to Oz. Snow's only case features a television screen turning into a gateway to Conjo's Island for Twink and Tom, who, with the Shaggy Man, make their way to Oz. Cosgrove's Jam flies to Oz by kite, while the McGraws and Merry send Robin and Merry off to Oz by having them fly off a merry go round.

Only two "borderland" books have people going to fairylands that are part of Oz (the two Trot books don't count here): Dot and Tot of Merryland and John Dough and the Cherub. John Dough has John Dough and Chick fly to different islands either by rocket, flying machine, or flamingo.

Merryland is more troublesome. Dot and Tot enter Merryland through a tunnel their boat floats into and are later sent out another tunnel. This would suggest Merryland is hidden in the United States, but when we see a map of Oz's surrounding countries, there's Merryland, bordering the Deadly Desert. There are three explanations: one is that there was a space rift or portal inside the first tunnel at least, and the Queen opened another one to send Dot and Tot home. Second is that Merryland was hidden in the US, but after Dot and Tot left, the Queen's fairy magic moved it to Nonestica. Third is that those tunnels were very, very, long, but Dot and Tot didn't realize it because it was dark. For that to work, the boat would have to have been moving very fast. Or it happened while Dot and Tot were asleep.

In whatever case, I see no reason in the Famous Forty Oz books (and the expanded universe stories) that Oz isn't a hidden country on Earth.

Wiki-ed Witches

Recently, I've been puttering at the Royal Wiki of Oz again.

Tonight, I mentioned to Oziana editor Marcus Mebes that I'd like to have a complete index of Oziana on the wiki. He mentioned he had been wanting to compile such a thing. I had the site, so a page about Oziana is up on the wiki, listing every single issue.

Every issue can have a page, every writer can have a page, and every story can have a page.

However, Marcus and I can't do it alone. Marcus, just now, has assembled issue listings for 2005-2011. We'd need some help. This is the page we've set up for the 2011 issue. That gives you an idea of how we'd like the pages to look.

And why a new Oz wiki when there's Wikipedia with an Oz section and an Oz wiki on Wikia? Wikipedia isn't comprehensive in these areas, and won't allow the same scope of articles I want for the wiki. And I don't know who runs the Wikia wiki, which has several strange gaps and incorrect information.

Come on folks, I wanna see some action that isn't an unavoidable spammer or me updating!

All in the family!

The fun thing about being an older brother and an Oz fan, you have younger siblings to share Oz with. It's more or less because of me that my three youngest siblings, Genevieve, Arthur, and Daniel got to see the MGM Wizard of Oz. And Disney's Return to Oz. And a large number of other Oz films as well.

Since Mom didn't approve of Oz, when she'd go away with Dad for an evening, my Oz tapes got to be watched. In fact, they even really enjoyed the silent Oz films, which I had on videocassette. (I donated them to a church sale after upgrading to DVD. I kinda wish I'd hung onto them and made sure they'd gone to actual Oz fans, but it's not really something I regret.) Along with me reading the title cards to them, we'd often create dialogue for the characters.

One case was a lot of fun. The Wonderful Land of Oz seems to have a low audio volume on video prints, so one time, we just turned the audio all the way down and made up new dialogue and songs, with no care about how well it actually fit the story. When Mombi is about to leave Tip downstairs. My sister Audrey (younger sister, but not little) ad-libbed "I'm going to climb up this ladder and then fall down and break my neck and die! Except... I don't think I want to do that. I'm a chicken. (At this point, Mombi points at Tip.) Just like you."

This was then followed by my ad-libbed song, "This cheese is as hard as a rock." Later, when Tip is holding up the cloth that held their food, saying that was the last of it, it became, "Jack, why did you dump all our food out on the ground?" Jack protests, "I had to sneeze!"

There was one accident, though. For some reason, The Jitterbug video at the end of Warner Brother's Wizard of Oz tape was enough to terrify Gen and Arthur. When they had to go bed one night, they protested they didn't want to because they were afraid of the Jitterbug. Mom told us we weren't allowed to watch fantasy movies then, something that didn't hold. (They didn't have such a bad reaction to anything in Return to Oz, except when Mombi's heads start screaming. Then they covered their eyes.)

But the real fun came when I retold them Oz and Baum stories. I more or less told straight retellings of Baum's Oz books and The Sea Fairies and maybe other fantasies, with few changes. One was that in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, they stumble into the Voe fish market, an alteration made due to the humorous way I'd say "feeesh!"

The most popular stories they'd ask for actually came from Baum's American Fairy Tales, particularly, "The Magic Bon-Bons" (which I just renamed "The Magic Candy" for simplicity's sake) and "The Box of Robbers." (Italian accents are funny!)

They didn't ask to read the Oz books and I never made them, but when I had Oz comics (either from the library or I'd added to my collection), they'd enjoy those with me willingly. When I got a copy of Dick Martin's Cut and Build the Emerald City of Oz, Daniel looked forward to the day when it would be put together, something that didn't happen until 2010.

Today, Gen lives in Texas with Audrey and her husband Shaun, where she enjoys her own interests. Arthur still lives with my parents (-ish, it's complicated) and is a fledgling cartoonist and filmmaker. Daniel lives with my oldest brother Aaron, his wife Jessica, and my niece Amber. Daniel has a shelf of books he's read, including The Chronicles of Narnia and other novels.

As for Amber, last Christmas, I decided it was past time I put some Ozzification in her life, so I gave her a copy of the Del Rey Wizard of Oz paperback and the MGM movie on DVD. Ah, we Oz fans, infecting the next generation...

Audio and Oz

In all my time reading about L. Frank Baum, something has always made me wonder: why didn't he ever make a recording of his voice? In the now long-gone Fairylogue and Radio Plays films, he appeared on film. It's even been suggested he may appear in the existing Oz Film Manufacturing Company films, although no one's been able to definitely spot him.

Baum, being an actor, merchant, and newspaper man before turning to writing for children must have had no reservations about his voice. And we know he was fascinated by new technology. There's even a phonograph in his Oz stories. So, why did he never commit his voice to phonograph? And if he ever did, why has it not turned up?

I am also unaware of any available recordings of Ruth Plumly Thompson. She was on television for an interview in 1963, and I read in The Baum Bugle how a tape of it was played at an Oz convention. It's debatable if it was video tape or audio tape, and goodness knows if it yet exists or where it is. (In fact, was that interview—which was filmed ahead of time according to another article—just junked after it aired, or has it been lost?)

I would be expecting less to find audio of John R. Neill or W.W. Denslow. But another lack of audio that has really puzzled me is Jack Snow. I mean, the guy worked for a radio station. Surely his voice had gone out on the airwaves. Who knows, there may be recorded audio of Jack Snow somewhere and we don't know it's him.

When it comes to the last two Royal Historians, we've had better luck. As I linked to over the weekend, Rachel Cosgrove Payes appeared in the documentary Oz: The American Fairyland, preserving a glimpse at her personality. In addition, David Maxine has informed me has an audio tape of Rachel at a convention he intends to transfer to digital audio and eventually share. (Or so I think. Hope I'm not misunderstanding.)

As for Eloise McGraw, David Maxine again helped out by recording a talk she gave at a Winkie Convention and has had it online for quite awhile! I find it odd I can't find video of her, though. Ah, well. That talk really gives you a look at her personality.

Other people associated with Oz have been luckier. Again with David Maxine, his 2-CD set Vintage Recordings From The 1903 Broadway Musical The Wizard Of Oz includes songs not from the show that feature some of the stars, including the original Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, Fred Stone and David Montgomery. Some of their recording include their corny jokes and give a peek at the humor of the day.

Fred Stone later appeared on the Maxwell House radio show in 1939, as part of the promotion for MGM's film version of The Wizard of Oz. He got to talk to Ray Bolger, and said Bolger would have been his choice to play the Scarecrow, more or less giving his blessing. Frank Morgan butts in, and makes the ridiculous claim to have starred in the original Broadway Wizard of Oz, but he doesn't know who Fred Stone is. He tells a ridiculous story, and Fred says it's very interesting. When Frank is finally caught in his lie, Fred leaves, giving a little laugh, saying, "That's not static, folks, it's the old, old Scarecrow!" (This has been an audio feature on Warner Brother's Wizard of Oz DVDs since 1999.)

Such delightful gems from the past could easily have been lost to us if people had not taken the trouble to preserve it. To me, preserving the past is important. New technologies arise helping to do this easily. Old books, photos and documents may be viewed easily by a good scan, meaning they only need to be put through one more use before being able to be preserved themselves. Video and audio were once expensive mediums but now can be enjoyed for free online. By these mediums, items that would once be rare and difficult to find and use in research may be used by all.

The internet has made research so easy in the past several years. Even if you can't find what you're looking for online in a digital form, you can find where to find it, whether in a library or where you can buy it. Thanks to the internet, my Oz collection has grown vastly over the past couple years. I recently began adding vinyl records to my collection. To be sure, I don't currently have a way to use them, but I think I can take care of that soon.

Another peek at Outsiders

This was in another batch of illustrations Shawn Maldonado sent in for Outsiders last night. Yes, that is a Rubik's Cube. (Except I just call it "puzzle cube.")