The Wonder City of Oz

Oz Continued #34

by John R. Neill, L. Frank Baum (Based On Work by)

A girl's journey to Oz is chronicled in this book.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Childrens, Classics, Juvenile, Adventure

318 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

John Rea Neill (November 12, 1877 - September 19, 1943) was a magazine and children's book illustrator primarily known for illustrating more than forty stories set in the Land of Oz, including L. Frank Baum's, Ruth Plumly Thompson's, and three of his own. His pen-and-ink drawings have become identified almost exclusively with the Oz series. He did a great deal of magazine and newspaper illustration work which is not as well known today.

(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[hpboy13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is far whackier and crazier than any other version of Oz, and very fun to read about! The Oz-lection is perhaps the most absurd thing yet in this world.

ETA 2018: I enjoy Neill’s trippy Oz, where everything is sentient and the puns fly faster than ever. Wonder City is fun, since it pokes fun at elections, among many other things.

However, Wonder City is just so… GROSS in its treatment of its protagonist, that I can’t quite get past it to enjoy it. Jenny is considered too ill-tempered as a fifteen-year-old, which certainly seems like a common complaint regarding teenagers. So the initial solution is to just turn her back into a eleven-year-old for her own good, without even letting her know. I get that this was written many decades before issues of consent and agency, but still, gross.

It only gets so much worse in the ending. Anyone who doesn’t kiss Ozma’s feet is quite obviously wrong in the world of Oz, so Jenny suddenly becomes the villain. At which point she’s knocked unconscious, and the other characters decide to remove her temper and jealousy (gross, even if understandable in a fairy tale). They also remove her ambition, because a happy ending involves removing a girl’s ambition to make her docile and obedient. And that’s the part I can’t get past.

While I can suspend my modern sensibilities for a lot of un-PC elements in older works, this is one I just can’t get past, and it really mars my enjoyment of the whole book.

[Pierce Franco · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can be more dangerous in Oz than a teenage girl, half-fairy with a terrible temper and high desires for power? Why, that's Jenny Jump.

New fashion styles are coming to Oz in this fresh new adventure.

Although Jenny Jump is far from being the heroine, she's a very temperamental character, highly ambitious, and competitive. She knows what she wants... what all girls want. A bit a power. She didn't want to be just a princess from a classic fairytale. No, she wants to be the one who rules.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot... John R. Neill did have good ideas for this book: The Leprechaun, the half-fairy transformation of Jenny, the animated houses fighting each other... It was wonderful. A wonderful new adventure in Oz.

Sir Hokus of Poke wasn't among my favorite characters introduced by Thompson. However, I have to say I liked that fact that Neill brought him back as he used to be... Before that awful outcome back in The Yellow Knight of Oz.

Also, I can't forget to mention the fact that in a single chapter (such as 'The Birthday Parade'), John R. Neill did what Ruth Plumly Thompson used to take a whole book: all of his party of characters traveled all around Oz.

[Kate Wolford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this book started it all for me, so I give it five stars largely based on nostalgia.
I found it in one of the many book piles in my home more than 40 years ago. I suppose I was around seven years old, and for some reason, the book's, crazy, fun-house-mirror-distorted cover drew me in.

I read the first line... "Jenny Jump jumped." Before too many pages, Jenny was half fairy. The notion of being half fairy who could jump to Oz dazzled me completely. I was, from that day forward, hooked on reading.

Having just reread it for the zillionth time, I can't say the book is a classic, or even especially good. It's filled with too many characters, even for an Oz book, and John R. Neill, the illustrator for most of L. Frank Baum's books was not the writer Baum was, and "The Wonder City of Oz" is a bit like a variety show with too many performers.

Yet, he created chocolate stars in this book (actually in the heavens, with real chocolate soldiers). He writes of a "turn-style," where people walk through a magical turnstile that gives them brand-new fabulous outfits. There's an election (Jenny is a bit of a malcontent), but Ozma handles it all with good humor.

The book is crowded, but undeniably, a dream weaver. It's the kind of book a child or adult can ponder on a lazy day.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2566612.html

It's the thirtieth Oz novel, in the series started long long before by L. Frank Baum, but the first by John R. Neill. It starts with a heroine who herself takes her name from a racist legend of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border, having an encounter with a leprechaun who is as Oirish as they come. The happy ending of the book - I am not making this up - comes when the Wizard of Oz surgically removes any trace of ambition from the heroine, so that she can be a modest and pleasant girl. There is an election, which is determined by assigning voters to each candidate randomly and adding up their total weight. (Oz experts claim that this bit was not written by Neill. It's one of the better bits of the book.)

[David Sheward · Rating 2 out of 5]

I borrowed this post-Baum Oz book from a friend who has almost the entire Oz canon. When Del Rey Books published about 29 of them in paperback in the early 1980s, I bought and read most of those, but subsequently gave them away to a young relative. Now I have a yearning to return to Oz. Maybe it's the weight of reality bearing down on me. Baum wrote 14 Oz books. Then after his death, Ruth Plumbly Thompson another 19. John R. Neil illustrated all abut the very first Oz book and after Baum's death and Thompson's retiring from Oz, he took a turn at writing and illustrating the annual Oz books. Neil is a better artist than writer. The plot is all over the place. Baum and Thompson's stories usually had a central focus or mission (get to the Emerald City, find the missing Ozma, etc.) Neil crams dozens of plotlines into his framework until it bursts. Plus all the buildings and household objects are sentient and talkative, leading to all kinds of confusion.

The central story--if you can call it that--spotlights Jennie Jump, an adventurous girl from New Jersey who winds up in Oz through the magic of a leprechaun. She somehow leaps to Oz from NJ, becomes a fashionista in the Emerald City, and challenges Ozma for rulership of the land in an "ozlection." Along the way, an army of chocolate soldiers invades the capital and Jack Pumpkinhead and Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, are taken prisoner.

Neil circumvents Baum's message that girls can be just as adventurous and ingenious as boys by presenting Jennie as an ill-tempered, overly ambitious female. In the end, the Wizard cures her of these flaws by surgically removing them. UGH!

An amusing read for those who are curious about Oz after Baum and Thompson finished with the magical land.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

After over a decade of illustrating Oz books, John R. Neill was a natural choice to carry on Oz mythology after Baum’s death. Neill even has a similar affection for puns, as Baum did, and he draws up several of Baum’s beloved characters. But the problem is that Neill is clearly a far better illustrator than he is an author. The best parts of this book are the many two-page works of art.

In the book’s introduction, Neill muses, “Were the pictures made to go with the story or was the story written to explain the pictures?” I suspect it was at least partly the latter. And it shows.

The story itself isn’t bad. The idea of an “ozlection” to choose the ruler of Oz gives the book good bones. But it feels like the story contains enough material for three books crammed into one. This plot is all over the place, not even with the sort of episodic approach Baum often falls into of putting one loosely connected event after another. I frequently had no idea what was going on. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. The Voice That Lost His Man (when it was taken over by a Cold) gave me a good chuckle.

There is plenty of cleverness here, just not enough organization. I’m glad I read it once, but once was enough.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 1940 edition of the book. The book has a lot of black-and-white illustrations but what the person who owned the book before has done is to color the illustrations in. They haven't done every single one, but they've done most of them. Now that would normally upset me somewhat to buy a book and find out it had been colored in, but in this case it didn't since whoever did the coloring did an excellent job on the illustrations. The coloring is not messy and the colors fit the drawings.

Now, for the actual story. A new character is introduced, Jenny Jump who is fifteen. She's a major brat and has an incredibly bad temper. She sees a leprechaun and ends up being changed into a half-fairy then later ends up in Oz.


There's a plan to have an election in Oz to determine the ruler, whether it is to be Ozma or Jenny. In addition there's a planned attack on the city by chocolate soldiers and an absurd election is held. The story is overall decent although, for me at least, the absurdities in the Alice in Wonderland story make some kind of sense while some of the ones in the Oz stories seem to be too weird to even be partially believable.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neill was the illustrator of many or the original Oz books. My one real complaint is that he continues Ruth Plumly Thompson's error, putting the Winkies on the East and the Munchkins on the West. Wrong. Flipped from Baum.

He continues the wordplay and puns so typical of Baum, the villains are villainous, Ozma, Glinda, and Dorothy remain very well-behaved without being goody-goody, and the new characters are believable in context, though not outside an Oz book!

The illustrations alone are worth the price.

[Elena · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a mess. There are way to many things going on which makes picking up on a plot impossible. The main character, Jenny Jump is insanely unlikable. This books introduces new concepts to the Oz world that I don't think work very well, like buildings that are alive or the fact that the Wizard of Oz goes around in disguise so people don't recognize him around town. There were interesting parts of Wonder City but overall none of those parts came together the way a book should.