The Magical Mimics in Oz
Cover of The Magical Mimics in Oz.
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| Author | Jack Snow |
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| Illustrator | Frank Kramer |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Oz Books |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Reilly & Lee |
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Publication date
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1946 |
| Media type | print (hardcover) |
| Preceded by | Lucky Bucky in Oz |
| Followed by | The Shaggy Man of Oz |
The Magical Mimics in Oz (1946) is the thirty-seventh in the series of Oz books created by L. Frank Baum and his successors, and the first written by Jack Snow. It was illustrated by Frank G. Kramer. The book entered the Public Domain in the United States, when its copyright was not renewed as required.
Jack Snow was the fourth official chronicler or "Royal Historian" of Oz, after Baum himself, Ruth Plumly Thompson, and long-time Oz illustrator John R. Neill. Snow made a conscious attempt to return to Baum's inspiration for Oz; in both of the Oz books he wrote, The Magical Mimics and The Shaggy Man of Oz (1949), he deliberately avoided using any characters introduced by Thompson or Neill. Snow crammed Magical Mimics with Baum's characters, sometimes presented in long rosters. Little room was left for original characters; Snow's main creations were his Mimic villains, plus the fairy Ozana, her kitten Felina, and her wooden puppet people the Hi-Los.
Snow's approach was controversial among fans of Thompson's and Neill's works; yet it had the virtue of workability. Prior to their acceptance of Snow as an Oz author, publisher Reilly & Lee had solicited veteran children's-book writer Mary Dickerson Donahey for the job. Dickerson Donahey turned the publisher down, however, since she judged that "it would be too much of a struggle to keep track of all the characters and plots in the series."
Snow drew upon a range of Baum's books for hints and inspirations. A talking Toto, for example, is important in Snow's narrative; Baum first made Toto speak at the end of Tik-Tok of Oz. Yet the work that Snow relied upon most heavily for Magical Mimics was Baum's sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz.
Snow based his villainous Magical Mimics on the Phanfasms in Baum's Emerald City. In the eleventh chapter of that book, Baum states that "the Erbs are the most powerful and merciless of all evil spirits, and the Phanfasms of Phantastico belong to the race of Erbs." Snow makes his Mimics another type of Erb; they live within the hollows of Mount Illuso, a peak next door to Mount Phantastico. Like the Phanfasms, the Mimics are ugly and malevolent shape-shifters; they have the additional trick of being able to copy the appearance of humans, simply by stepping into their shadows. People duplicated in this way are paralyzed by the magic, but remain conscious.
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