On My Shelves: The Road to Oz

The Road to Oz begins, as did the others except The Marvelous Land of Oz, in the "outside world", this time back in Kansas on Dorothy's farm. A strange, shaggy man comes wandering through, picking apples and putting them in his pocket – and when a certain black dog challenges him, he picks up the dog and puts him in the shaggy pockets, too.

The Shaggy Man encounters Dorothy and asks if she would show him the road to Butterfield; she agrees and takes him to the intersection, and is then surprised when he begins to move off down a different road. The Shaggy Man explains that he wanted to know which road led to Butterfield so that he wouldn't go there – a man in Butterfield owes the Shaggy Man money, and the Shaggy Man doesn't want it.

But as he stands there telling his story, the two suddenly realize that there are seven, rather than four, roads leading away from the point they are standing at – a place which was only an ordinary intersection a few moments ago. Another strange adventure has begun for Dorothy, her dog Toto (who escapes from the Shaggy Man's pocket), and the Shaggy Man himself.

The Shaggy Man possesses one of the few magical items we ever see outside of Oz: the Love Magnet, which causes anyone who beholds the magnet to instantly love (in a platonic fashion, at least as far as the Shaggy Man is concerned; there's some indication in the backstory that it could be romantic as well) the holder of the Magnet. The Magnet is one reason the Shaggy Man has no need or desire for money; since he's loved wherever he goes, he can just wander as he pleases.

For the most part, The Road to Oz is a travelogue, even more so than Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz was. The latter at least had considerable mystery and much genuine peril in the travels of our heroes, with the group concerned often with survival. This only happens once in Road to Oz, when the party is captured by the violent and evil Scoodlers, who intend to make soup of the entire group. (Even the Love Magnet is useless; they say they love the Shaggy Man… as soup!). Other than that, most of the things they encounter are peculiar, but not dangerous.

This isn't to say there aren't interesting and even significant events in this, the fifth of the Oz novels. It is in this book that Oz fans first meet the Eternally Lost Boy, Button-Bright, and then – most significant to me – first encounter the beautiful Daughter of the Rainbow, Polychrome.

In the first town they arrive at – Foxville – the travelers meet with the ruler, King Dox, and in a roundabout way discover the reason for the sudden appearance of the various roads; it's an arranged adventure which is to bring Dorothy to Oz by the twenty-first of August, which is Ozma's birthday, so she can be present at her fairy friend's birthday party. Pretty much everyone (other than the Scoodlers) that they encounter begs to be invited to the party, and Dorothy does promise to do so.

Baum, of course, doesn't allow the journey to be without difficulties. Besides the very real threat of the Scoodlers (who can remove their heads and use them as missiles and are quite agile and strong), there are other quandaries; both Button-Bright and the Shaggy Man end up transformed by well-meaning people and must seek a cure for their transformations, and there are various physical obstacles, the largest being the Deadly Desert which they end up crossing by use of a sand-boat (something I have Erik echo in his own crossing of the desert in Polychrome, though Erik also took inspiration there from Clive Cussler's Sahara).

Nonetheless, this is one of the weakest of the Oz books. The entire point of the journey is the Birthday Party, which is mostly an excuse to introduce a broad variety of other characters from fairyland to the reader, ranging from Queen Zixi of Ix to several guests from Merryland, others from Hiland and Loland, and even Santa Claus himself – possibly in hopes of increasing the sales of the books that these people were in, as they came from other stories Baum wrote.

These newcomers are introduced but for the most part have only the briefest of appearances at the reception; the party and subsequent return of most of the guests home by the Wizard's new bubble machine wrap up the story, without giving us much chance to learn much about anyone new.

The Road to Oz is a pleasant enough read, but it is definitely one of the lesser works of the canon, and aside from the introduction of three new recurring characters – Shaggy Man, Button-Bright, and Polychrome – doesn't really have much of substance to it. We'll have somewhat better luck in the next book, The Emerald City of Oz.