Tik-Tok of Oz

Tik-Tok of Oz is an odd book, though I knew none of it when I was a child. Baum adapted Ozma of Oz into a stage musical, just as he had Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land. But the stage rights to any characters who appeared in those musicals still belonged to those musicals' producers, so the new musical couldn't feature any of those characters. The resulting musical was evidently different enough that Baum, always looking to take shortcuts while writing, adapted it back into a novel! Yes there are quite a lot of similarities to Ozma of Oz... but I actually don't think I noticed as a kid!

What I did notice, reading it for the first time in decades, aloud to my three-year-old son, was that the Shaggy Man clearly meets Polychrome for the show more first time here, even though the two were travelling companions in Road. As I sometimes do, I edited it while reading it aloud, to make it clear that they did know each other. (Beside, the whole meeting scene is a set-up for a torturous bow/beau pun that would have gone right over my son's head.)

That said, as a kid it never was one of my favorites. I might blame the fact that it's one of two Oz books where my edition was an illustration-less Puffin Classic, but I didn't get much more out of it this time around. It has its moments: I like Queen Ann, especially at first, the Nome King and Kaliko are always fun.

But on the other hand, it has a lot of characters who don't do anything; I imagine Ozga and Private Files had some romantic duets on stage, but here they just stand around. Even more unfortunately, Tik-Tok is barely in it. I'd guess he made a great spectacle on stage, but again, he's just here most of the time. The main characters don't really do anything to defeat the Nome King; it's Quox the dragon sent by Tititi-Hoochoo who does all the work there. Betsy is pretty much a nonentity compared to Baum's other child protagonists like Dorothy and Trot and Ojo.

(Betsy knows what Oz is and that Dorothy is a princess there, indicating she must have read the Oz books. This fits with the conceit Baum introduced a couple books back, most notably Emerald City, that he was an historian receiving updates from a real place that he published in book form. However, Betsy doesn't know who the Nome King or Shaggy Man are... yet the only two books where Dorothy is a princess already are Emerald City and Patchwork Girl, and the Nome King appeared in the former and the Shaggy Man the latter!)

For the first time, my son expressed some aesthetic opinions on an Oz book. After the first couple chapters, all about Queen Ann wanting to conquer things, he told me he didn't want them to conquer anything. He doesn't like things to be broken! And once it was over he actually said it wasn't his favorite Oz book!

And yet... after we finished, he had a brief period of wanting to make his own Oz book, and he drew pictures for it, and enlisted me and Hayley to do it too. What was this Oz book called? Hank of Oz! See my blog for the details... show less

If you read 'Tik-Tok of Oz' (Book 8) because you're a fan of the mechanical man Tik-Tok, first introduced in Ozma of Oz (Book 3), you will be sorely disappointed. While Tik-Tok does feature in this book, he is absolutely not the main character, nor the main focus, in fact I regularly forgot he was there at all, so little impact does he have on the story. He is also useless now, constantly falling over, despite having been rather talented and cunning originally.

To start off, Book 8 is a bad cover version of Book 3 (according to Wikipedia, this is because Baum adapted it from a script written for a film of Ozma of Oz). We get another army made up of officers with only one private, we get a little girl and an animal washed overboard, we show more get Tik-Tok and we get the Nome King. But don't worry, it also reuses ideas from Book 4 (royalty grown on a bush that the heroes pluck to save their lives) and Book 5 (Polychrome and Shaggy Man - my least favourite character - are back, the latter once again using his creepy love magnet). The Nome King in general behaves exactly as he did in Book 6, despite having had his memory wiped at the end of that book.

Eventually this story stops being the most derivative of the series and comes up with a few new ideas. However as usual this is still a big group of dull characters (way too many characters in this one all bringing nothing to the story) going from random place to place and overcoming peril so easily that it is never exciting. Only the last two chapters are set in Oz. I did enjoy the final chapter, in which our animal friends threaten to fight each other over who is the best little girl in Oz and Dorothy finally finds out why Toto doesn't talk (after the continuity error in the previous book, which I'm sure that Baum had to correct due to fans writing to him to complain). Seeing the 'regulars' is always the best bit, so I don't understand why Baum felt it necessary to continually create new bland characters going to new random places every book. We want to see our favourites obviously! show less

Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo, a remote corner of the Land of Oz, sets out with her army of eighteen to conquer the world in this eighth Oz novel from L. Frank Baum. Quickly transported by Glinda the Good to the barren dominions of the Nome King, the company eventually meets up with some other travelers, in the form of shipwrecked Oklahoma girl Betsy Bobbin and Hank the mule, Ozga the dispossessed Rose Princess, the Shaggy Man, and Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter. Ann and her army fall in with the Shaggy Man's quest to rescue his long lost brother from the Nome King, and they are soon joined by the mechanical copper man Tik-Tok, whom they rescue from a well. After some adventures in a fairy-land on the other side of the world, show more courtesy of the Hollow Tube, they eventually do manage to make their way to the Nome King's underground stronghold where, with the help of Quox the dragon, they defeat their enemy...

As many other online reviewers have noted, Baum recycles any number of characters and plot-lines in Tik-Tok of Oz, which, despite its title, is more the story of a diverse ensemble of characters, than of one alone. The girl-led army has been seen before in Oziana, in the form of General Jinjur's Army of Revolt, in The Marvelous Land of Oz. The Shaggy Man first appeared in The Road to Oz, as did Polychrome, but their reappearance is not unusual, given Baum's fondness for bringing back his characters. Betsy Bobbin and Hank, on the other hand, are clearly inspired by Dorothy and Billina the yellow hen, who are likewise shipwrecked in Ozma of Oz, also discover Tik-Tok imprisoned and rescue him, and also become involved in an adventure opposing the terrible Nome King. That similarity of plot is not accidental, something discussed in the brief editor's note at the beginning of the edition I read. Apparently this tale began as a stage adaptation of Ozma of Oz, in which Baum was forced to change a number of the characters' names, because he had already signed away the stage rights to the real ones. Having created a slightly different adventure, with a few new characters thrown in, he then turned the stage play (The Tik-Tok Man of Oz) into an entirely new novel. Recycling indeed!

Despite its lack of originality with regard to the story-line and characters, I quite enjoyed Tik-Tok of Oz, no doubt owing to the fact that the book upon which it is based, Ozma of Oz, is my favorite of the entire series. Unsurprisingly, the tale here held together fairly well, and was engaging. As always, the artwork from John R. Neill was just enchanting! Recommended to Oz fans. show less

I think Baum must have done eeny meeny miney mo to choose the title of this book. There were so many characters, and Tik Tok didn't feature any more prominently than the others.
Baum did quite well to draw the different plot lines and characters together to their common aim of defeating the nome king. Some young readers might find the early part of the book a little fragmented, but overall it was a good addition to the Oz series.
I listened to the Librivox audiobook, which had terrific narration.

Just not feeling this one. I really have enjoyed (for the most part) reading through the entire Oz collection, but this one fell flat for me. The characters and situations didn't come alive for me and the plot was such a mish-mash that it felt cobbled together rather than fully conceived. I expected to be delighted and I was not.

The fun begins in an isolated corner of Oz, in the small country of Oogaboo. There Queen Ann Soforth musters an unlikely army and sets off to conquer the rest of Oz. Meanwhile, a girl from Oklahoma named Betsy Bobbin and her companion, Hank the mule, are shipwrecked and washed ashore in the Rose Kingdom, a magical land of talking roses. There they meet the Shaggy Man, who is on a quest to rescue his brother from the clutches of the wicked Nome King. Betsy, Hank, and the Rose Princess join the Shaggy Man on his journey, and before long they meet up with Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter; Tik-Tok; and Queen Ann with her army. The rest of Baum's tale is filled with hairbreadth escapes, wild puns, and mystifying magic.

Baum continues to create a wonderful world that is fantastical in nature with this particular book. As we get further away from the book that was supposed to end it all (The Emerald City of Oz) we can see some of the joy returning to the writing of the series. He tells stories that entertain and he understands now that his audience wanted more of these stories. He seems to have a deeper respect for what he created with these books by this book than he has in the previous volume (The Patchwork Girl of Oz).

In this book he introduces Betsy Bobbins, who is another little girl like Dorothy from the US. This book sees her meeting some of the other characters from the previous books, but introducing a few other interesting characters along show more the way. Baum keeps the story simple and interesting while playing with his previous creations. A great part of this book is his reuse of his character of the Nome King. He is able to play on things he used in the other books and then build up something that makes total sense for everything that has come before. I really enjoy his world-building in this book. I am appreciating the writing aspects of his Oz series more than I am getting that "magical" feeling though for the series. show less