Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz

The Wizard, Dorothy, and the Cowardly Lion find their trip to Red Top Mountain full of unexpected complications

Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote twenty-one volumes in the famous Oz series. She introduced such beloved characters as Jinnicky the Red Jinn, Sir Hokus, Speedy, Terrybubble, and best-loved of all, Kabumpo, the elegant elephant. Thompson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 27, 1891. She had two sisters, Dorothy and Janet, and one brother, Richard. When Thompson was two years old her father became night editor of The New York Times and the family moved to Brooklyn, New York. Her father died suddenly in 1895 and Thompson's mother returned to Philadelphia with the four young children. In 1914 Thompson began writing an elaborate children's page for the Philadelphia Public Ledger. The weekly page contained poems, stories, fables, helpful columns about pets, dolls, toys, and much more. Her first book, THE PERHAPPSEY CHAPS (1918) was a collection of fairy poems from the Public Ledger, and a similar volume of fairy tales, THE PRINCESS OF COZYTOWN, was published in 1922. In 1920 Thompson was contracted by the Reilly and Lee Company to continue the Oz series after L. Frank Baum's death in 1919. Her first Oz book, THE ROYAL BOOK OF OZ (1921), was credited to Baum with the additional byline "Enlarged and edited by Ruth Plumly Thompson." But the book was solely the work of Thompson. In 1921, she gave up her job at the Public Ledger and devoted herself to writing an Oz book each year until 1939. Reilly and Lee also published an omnibus volume of Thompson's Ledger material called THE WONDER BOOK (1929). From the mid-1930s to mid-1940s Thompson worked as editor of the David McKay Company's King Comics, providing an editorial page and short story for almost every issue. She wrote editorials for Ace Comics and Magic Comics, too. David McKay also published Thompson's KING KOJO (1936), originally serialized in the pages of King Comics. In the 1940s and '50s Thompson sold many stories to Jack and Jill magazine and she wrote Jack and Jill's "Perky Puppet" page until Decem