The Gnome King of Oz (The Wonderful Oz Books, #21)

First off, I love Oz. I first discovered the Wonderful World of Oz when my parents showed me their collection of original Oz books from the early 1900's. I read a couple and fell in love. Recently I've been growing my own Oz collection. I bought THE GNOME KING OF OZ and read through it with joy at reading a whole new Oz story. But even though a worthy addition to the Oz canon, THE GNOME KING OF OZ is a little hit and miss. The basic story revolved around Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, the Gnome King, and another of Thompson's generic boy heroes, this one from her own Philadelphia named Peter. The story picks up as a sort of sequel to KABUMPO IN OZ, at the end of which the Gnome King is banished to the Lonely Isle/Runaway Island as it is referred to both during the book. Scraps has been kidnapped by the Quilties of Patch and made their Queen who has to slave away in the castle of Patch. Peter, the boy from Philadelphia, buys a balloon bird and flies off over the Nonestic Ocean, ending up on Ruggedo's island. The story is interesting, and some great new characters are introducted, such as Wumbo the Wonder Worker, Kuma Party, and Ozwold the oztrich. But other elements fall very flat. The useless bear Grumpy only bumbles along with Scraps on her adventures, and Peter doesn't grow very much as a character at all. His only real development in the story is in him realizing the Gnome King isn't the greatest of Oz folk to know. But then again the story is fun, and has some good twists that can be quite surprising if you haven't read PIRATES IN OZ, which gives away the entire ending of THE GNOME KING OF OZ. Great for a rainy day or something light to read.

Ruggedo is back, with yet another attempt to conquer the Land of Oz. As usual, Thompson does a good job with this character, making him a threatening yet childish and humorous villain. In this book, he temporarily teams up with Peter Brown from Philadelphia, who is not one of my favorite American visitors to Oz, but does have a well-developed personality. When Peter turns against Ruggedo, he uses his own talents to conquer the former Nome King. (Incidentally, in case you're wondering, Thompson used the traditional spelling of "gnome," hence the book title, but I prefer to use Baum's spelling.) The Patchwork Girl also makes an appearance, and Peter helps her to escape from Patch, another one of the tiny kingdoms scattered throughout Oz (and the second to emphasize sewing). After the escape from Patch, the timing suffers somewhat, with Peter and Scraps, along with the less interesting Grumpy the bear and Ozwold the oztrich, visiting the irrelevant villages that appear in most Oz books. While these villages are fairly clever Thompsonian creations, I found myself wanting to get back to Ruggedo's attempts to conquer the country. I wouldn't call this one of the better Oz books, but it is worth reading just for Ruggedo, and there's a lot of other good stuff in the book as well.