The Wonder City of Oz
Cover of The Wonder City of Oz
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| Author | John R. Neill |
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| Illustrator | John R. Neill |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Oz Books |
| Genre | Children's novel Fantasy |
| Publisher | Reilly & Lee |
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Publication date
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1940 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 318 pp. |
| Preceded by | Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz |
| Followed by | The Scalawagons of Oz |
The Wonder City of Oz (1940) is the thirty-fourth in the series of Oz books created by L. Frank Baum and his successors, and the first written and illustrated solely by John R. Neill.
With The Wonder City of Oz, Neill introduced a change in tone that continued through his subsequent books. Neill's Oz books "are highly imaginative, but the imagination is undisciplined; each book, in fact, has enough ideas to fill several." Neill's Emerald City has skyscrapers and gas stations. Normally inanimate objects act alive: houses talk and fight, shoes sing (they have tongues), and clocks run.
Jenny Jump captures a leprechaun named Siko Pompus (apparently a pun on "psychopomp") and forces him to make her into a fairy; but he only does half the job before escaping. Jenny then jumps to Oz using her half-fairy gifts. She lands in the carriage of Princess Ozma during a parade — and quickly expresses her desire to be a queen herself.
Jenny displays a bold and tempestuous nature; when she loses her temper she spits flames from her mouth. Yet she is also enterprising and resourceful; she soon sets up a Style Shop with a magic turnstile which gives fashion makeovers (the turnstile turns styles). Jenny half-adopts a munchkin boy called Number Nine (he's the ninth of fourteen children); he is overwhelmed by the force of her personality, and she treats him like a slave.
Jenny's disruptive nature quickly becomes apparent. In response, the Wizard removes her fairy abilities and starts making her younger. Jenny has her good points too: she saves the Emerald City from conquest by an army of chocolate soldiers. Yet her ambition lures her into running against Ozma in an Ozlection to become ruler of the Land of Oz. It is clear that Ozma will win any fair election by a landslide — but a landslide is a terribly dangerous thing to have in the Emerald City. So Prof. Wogglebug cooks up a more random choice, in which citizens are weighed on scales to determine their votes. In the end, the Ozlection is exactly a tie, with a precisely equal number of votes cast for Ozma and for Jenny Jump. Only one person has yet to vote: the leprechaun Siko Pompus. He assures Jenny that he is her friend, and then he steps forward to cast the deciding vote...for Ozma. (He claims it's for Jenny's own good, to save her "a heap of responsibility.")
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