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

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Summary: Yet another return of Ruggedo
Review: 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.

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Summary: All hail the Queen of the Quilties!
Review: Scraps the Patchwork Girl finds herself crowned Queen of the Quilties, but her new position is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. So she runs away, heading back to her home in the Emerald City. At the same time, Peter, a boy from the United States, is conned into helping the evil Gnome King regain control of the underworld. But when Peter figures out what the Gnome King really has up his sleeve, he changes sides and helps save the Emerald City from a Gnome invasion. Ruth Plumly Thompson again cooks up a breezy story full of off-the-wall jokes and lively characters. It's a treat.