The Ozmapolitan of Oz
First edition
|
|
| Author | Dick Martin |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Dick Martin |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Oz Books |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | International Wizard of Oz Club |
|
Publication date
|
1986 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 104 pp. |
| Preceded by | The Forbidden Fountain of Oz |
| Followed by | The Wicked Witch of Oz |
The Ozmapolitan of Oz is a 1986 novel written and illustrated by Dick Martin. As its title indicates, the book is an entrant in the long-running series of stories on the Land of Oz written by L. Frank Baum and various successors.
Like his predecessor John R. Neill, Dick Martin was a veteran Oz illustrator who moved into Oz authorship; The Ozmapolitan of Oz is Martin's single sustained work of Oz fiction. He includes Decalcomania, Xenophobia, Yahooism, and Zymolysis in a list of human diseases; his "Game Preserve" is a Parcheesi-like board game laid out in a landscape.
As both author and artist, Martin had control over the total expression of his fiction. Like most Oz authors, he supplied a human protagonist for young readers to identify with; unusually, he made his protagonist a teenager, a fifteen-year-old boy. In his illustrations, Martin made Dorothy Gale appear somewhat older than she is generally portrayed; she looks like she is at least twelve years old. A decade and a half later, Dave Hardenbrook would also offer a teenage protagonist in his 2000 novel The Unknown Witches of Oz; Martin does not go as far as Hardenbrook later would in making his teen hero a romantic interest.
The word "Ozmopolitan" was first used in 1904, in promotional material created by Baum's publisher Reilly & Britton. The idea was that the Wizard of Oz started an Oz newspaper so titled (a conceit that Martin adopts for his novel). Reilly & Britton issued press releases in this Oz-newspaper form in 1904 and 1905, publicizing Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz and related projects. It is possible though not certain that Baum himself wrote some of these early "Ozmapolitan" press releases. The publisher (under its later name Reilly & Lee) issued more "Ozmapolitan" press releases in the 1920s, to publicize the novels of Ruth Plumly Thompson, and in the 1960s for other products (including Merry Go Round in Oz, with illustrations by Dick Martin). Three decades later, Hungry Tiger Press used the same publicity technique for issues of its Oz-story Magazine.
...
Wikipedia